


(at least at times) you knew me

by MissSpookyEyes



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Plug, Bondage, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, F/F, Inappropriate Use of the Engine Room, Not Coping Well With Things, Predicament Bondage, Psychological Torture, Robot Gender Roles, Self-Harm, Space Sybians, This Fandom Needs More SCORPIO, Torture, Uncannily Good Impersonations, Verbal Humiliation, Write the porn you wish to see in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23881573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSpookyEyes/pseuds/MissSpookyEyes
Summary: In the aftermath of her brainwashing, Cipher Nine needs to know for sure whether she can be broken again.There's only one being who can be trusted to pushallher limits.
Relationships: Female Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine/SCORPIO, Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine/SCORPIO
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

'Consciousness returns.'

Devinahl opened her eyes to blackness.

Fear pierced her before she had fully awoken; she was blind, her implants had stopped working. Instinctively, she moved, hands wanting to fly to her face ...

Her wrists were caught by something stronger than she was, aborting her frantic movement with a jerk, instilling a new and deeper panic in her even as she registered the soft pressure of something wrapped around her head. Not blind, blindfolded.

And bound.

'Your vital signs improve.'

She knew that voice.

'Once you have assimilated your situation, we will begin.'

Her thoughts moved slowly, sluggishly, doused in chemicals; her body, quicker to realize its predicament, flung itself against its restraints again, or tried to. She could not move very much in any direction.

A lifetime of compartmentalisation came to her aid, dousing her with conditioned calm. She was already drawing a slow breath, focusing on one sense at a time.

Eyes. Open. Sightless. She didn't know what she had been blindfolded with, but it was doing a good job. Even her enhanced sight is useless without light to work with.

Ears, a different matter. She identified the low thrum as soon as she isolated it; the _Phantom's_ engines, close enough that they must be in the engine room. It wasn’t the steady scream of hyperspace, but the rhythmic throbbing of the sub-light engines. Orbit, or a slow crawl between stars. No footsteps, no other voices. Alone.

Skin. Exposed. Cool air. Naked.

Wrists. Restrained. Her hands are level with her head, dangling from cuffs of some kind of harsh cloth. Flexing her fingers, circling her wrists in their cuffs, she wraps each hand around more cloth ... Straps. That's a thought that sends an icy dart of fear lancing through her veins.

There was just enough slack for her to grasp the straps above her cuffs, use the leverage to lift herself.

'You may wish to conserve your strength.'

Devinahl held herself suspended for a second, then let her weight settle back on to ... whatever was between her legs.

It felt like synthleather, cool against her naked thighs which were parted, wide but not uncomfortably so, on either side of something curved, almost barrel-shaped. Her legs were bent as though she was kneeling, ankles bound to thighs; she tried shifting to one side and the other, but she was secured tight, astride the thing.

She focused on the sound of the _Phantom’s_ engine, tried to judge her position in relation to it, let the aural data fill in her mental map of the room, although whatever she was bound to had no normal place in it. It was keeping her some way off the floor, though. There was nothing beneath her knees or toes she could use to push upwards; she could clench her thighs to help, but if she wanted to lift herself, the bulk of the work was going to have to be done with her arms, by grasping the straps and pulling.

And she could already tell she was going to want to lift herself, because right where the junction of her thighs was pressed against the thing - and they were pressed against it, because her wrists were suspended just far enough forward to keep her from sitting back on her tailbone - the smooth synthleather gave way to ... a different texture.

Yes, she knew what this was.

Although she hadn't expected SCORPIO to.

'We will begin.'

'This isn't exactly what I had in mind,' Devinahl told the blackness as the textured pad between her legs began to vibrate.

*

Her mind was hers again. It must be.

She had heard her keyword spoken, and felt the familiar snap ripple through her brain, but it had left her will and consciousness untouched this time. She’d watched Ardun Kothe kneel to die, confronted Keeper, sent Hunter running from her (and she knew for a fact that there was nowhere he could, ultimately, hide).

Her mind was hers again. And yet.

It wasn't the dreams. There was nothing new for Devinahl in waking up retching, clawing herself free of the bedclothes so that she could lean over the side of the bed and let her stomach empty itself, or else gripped by a fear so cold, seated so firmly in her bones, that she could only lie still and stay quiet and silently plead for it to pass. The monsters wore new faces and had learned some new tortures, that's all. The dreams were nothing new.

Nor were the moods, the sudden spikes of adrenaline or abrupt fatigues, the overwhelming fury and disconnected images of violence or worse, the shameful urge to be close, to press her forehead against somebody's hand and let their touch chase everything else away.

This was just trauma. She knew trauma. Intimately. She had long ago mastered the art of forgetting, of taking what is usable from an experience and shutting whatever remained away. Her instructors had spent months teaching them different techniques and models for doing this, but Devinahl had always preferred her own: In her mind there were many rooms, and most of them had no doors, and she did not enter any of them unless she wanted to. And she never wanted to.

She was so good at it that she could not enter those rooms any more. She had learned that as Legate, when she had tried deliberately to open some of those doors, hoping that freeing those memories might shock her deeply enough to force the brainwashing to release its suffocating grip on her. But she had sealed them off far too persistently, too efficiently. She could look in through the windows of those rooms and watch what happened within as if it had happened to someone else, but she could not summon the memory of it happening to her.

That was how you survived; you let it happen, but not to you. Not to the real you. That, you took far away, where it could not be touched, where even things that really happened did not, in the final analysis, when it came down to it, matter at all.

It probably wouldn't have worked anyway, unleashing those memories, even if she had been able to. But she had found another way, hadn't she? She had spied on her own and risked a traitor's death and poisoned herself and it had all been worth it, for the look in Kothe's eyes when he realised he could no longer control her. To have her mind back. To have it be hers again.

And yet ... something had slipped.

Devinahl was conscious of it for the first time on the journey to Belsavis, when she lifted her eyes from the console to see Raina and Vector both staring at her, and realized belatedly that she had heard both of them speak to her, but had not recognized that she was the one being addressed, not connected 'Agent' or 'sir' with her. She covered the moment, but she knew both of them had read the sudden flicker of panic in her eyes.

Would she have answered to 'Cipher'? 'Devinahl'?

Would she have answered to 'Legate'?

There were reports that should have taken her ten minutes to read and process, which instead took the best part of an hour because she found herself staring blankly at the same sentence. There was a narrow escape from walking straight into a Republic patrol once they arrived on Belsavis, because she had turned east, not west. And when she searched her mental map of the route they had travelled, she found only a smear of erasure.

Devinahl sent Kaliyo back to the _Phantom_ after that, although she had been finding Kaliyo's company comforting - it was oddly cheering to be absolutely certain that if someone was going to betray you, it was only going to be for credits - and took Vector with her instead, because she was sure Vector wouldn't ask her any awkward questions, even if she led him into an ambush.

She forced herself to concentrate, upped her stim dosage, made contact with her convict targets. There were no more lapses, and she was starting to believe that she was once more in control of things.

Until, during a night-time skirmish with a band of Esh-ka, she reached for a poison dart from her wrist holster and found each of the six slots empty.

Shock flooded her; training maintained its firm grip on her. As she dropped to one knee, unsheathing her vibroknife, Devinahl heard herself think: _So this is what kills me. An amateur equipment error._ In a galaxy of Force-users and war droids, cyborgs with battle enhancements she could only dream of and aliens twice her height who moved like beautiful monsters, one thing had kept Cipher Nine alive: She did not make mistakes.

Until now.

The Esh-ka should have taken her bolt to the neck, been caught off-balance and half-turning to pluck out the dart as he came. Instead he was on top of her in one fluid pounce. She had already dropped beneath his swipe, and severed the vulnerable tendon at the back of the knee with one slash; as he staggered, she sliced upwards into his upper arm as she rose, spinning to evade another blow as she pulled her blaster rifle over her shoulder.

But that missed attack had cost her the only advantage she had, that of perfection, and the Esh-ka roared as it pounced, her blaster bolt sizzling harmlessly into ferracrete as it slammed her hard into the wall. Its clawed hand found her throat, its body pinning her blaster rifle to her side.

Devinahl choked beneath the pressure of that closing hand, feeling the claws slice into her neck, as she slid her left-hand blaster from her sleeve into her palm. She jammed it against the Esh-ka's ribs and pulled the trigger. The creature jerked as the blast stabbed into him, but it wasn't powerful enough to stop his claws closing.

Abruptly, the Esh-ka howled and arched. Its grip on her throat tightened spasmodically and then released, and Devinahl saw Vector, his face calm and serene in the moonlight. Before her brain had time to register the intricate, beautiful pattern his pike made as he pivoted and span, the arc described by the blade had ended deep in the creature's throat.

She met Vector's obsidian eyes as the Esh-ka, blood gurgling in its throat, dropped to its knees.

Had she just been saved, or betrayed?

Devinahl went over and over it in her mind as they continued their mission. Every night before she slept, she checked all her equipment, cleaning blasters, checking charge packs, testing vibroknives, refilling poisons. She was certain - _almost_ certain that she had done all of that the night before the skirmish with the Esh-ka; she racked her brains, tried every memory trick she knew, but she could not quite summon the precise recollection of having checked all her equipment.

The possibilities were limited. Either she had forgotten to check her equipment (but she never forgot to check her equipment) or someone had removed her poison darts when she wasn't looking. Devinahl was certain that nobody had approached their shelter while they slept. But why would Vector betray her now? And why would he sabotage her and then save her life, rescuing her from the consequences of that sabotage? Perhaps the hive had commanded him to kill her for their own Killik reasons, but the human part of him had rebelled, leading to his contradictory actions?

But Vector wasn't fractured like that. He was strange - alien - insane, even. But he was whole.

There was only one of them whose mind was broken.

She sent Vector back to the _Phantom_ , unable to bear his confused looks, and so it was Doctor Lokin with her when the whatever-it-was that had singled her out as a threat to Megasecurity Ward 23 released the gas which had her so-called team attack her. Devinahl wasn't sorry about that; at least no considerations of pity or friendship were going to stay her hand.

'You are immune to mind control technologies,' the cool, inhuman voice noted as Devinahl stood above the prone bodies of her allies.

'My mind is my own,' she murmured, for her own ears rather than anybody else's. 'My mind is my own.'

And yet.

*

Devinahl drew breath sharply as the vibrating pad beneath her hummed into life, instinctively wrapping her hands around the straps which held her suspended to lift herself away from the sensation.

It had a different name in every star system, but the machine's basic design never really altered. It consisted of a leather or plastic mount, often shaped like a barrel cut in half lengthways so that the user could sit comfortably astride it, the apex of their thighs pressed against a textured pad designed to stimulate. Usually there was a phallus attachment as well - or more than one - but this version of the device clearly did not involve penetration. Devinahl wasn't entirely sure whether or not to be glad or sorry about that; a different type of sensation might have helped to distract her. As it was, there was just the textured pad on which the front of her cunt, thanks to the angle at which she was bound, was pressed down - unless she actively used her arm and shoulder muscles to lift herself up and away from it.

SCORPIO's design was not difficult to understand. Clearly, the textured plastic beneath the junction of her thighs was going to continue to vibrate with the intention of stimulating her to orgasm. As her arms tired, she would find it more and more difficult to hold herself up, and would be able to do so for shorter and shorter intervals, until eventually she would be helpless on top of the vibrating pad, unable to do anything to stop it from making her come again and again, pushing her to the point of agony.

Experimentally, she lowered herself, and winced as her slit came into contact with the intensity of the vibrations. It would not take too much uninterrupted contact for that to become painful overstimulation.

Forced orgasm torture. The wet dream of every trainee interrogator and third-rate holoporn maker across the galaxy. It made her want to roll her eyes behind the blindfold.

She had no idea what vids SCORPIO had been watching, but it was certainly not the type of torture she had expected the droid to employ. And where had she obtained the machine? She must have had it delivered to the _Phantom_ at some point, because Devinahl could not imagine anyone on the crew kept one in their quarters; whatever type of vibrations aroused Vector, she didn't think they came from plastic and circuits, Temple would prefer a different kind of punishment and Kaliyo wouldn't be interested in riding anything that couldn't squirm underneath her. On the other hand, she had never been quite sure what Doctor Lokin got up to in that lab at night ...

Devinahl frowned, noticing belatedly that her thoughts were not moving as quickly as they should be; it was as if some remnant of unconsciousness still cocooned her. 'Did you drug me?'

'A mild intoxicant.' She estimated, from the sound of the emotionless voice, that SCORPIO was perhaps two and a half metres away from her; nowhere near close enough to touch, just to watch. 'It lowers inhibition.'

That perhaps explained how effectively the thrumming between her legs was doing its work; she could feel herself tingling, opening in a way which increased the contact with her clitoris. She lifted herself up for a count of five, letting the building sensation die away. 'This is all a little crude, SCORPIO.'

'You are a crude creature. Part of the purpose of this phase is to remind you of that.'

Devinahl let her weight settle back down, resisting the temptation to roll her hips against the pleasurable stimulation. She breathed slowly, deeply, in through her nose, out through her mouth; it was the same principle as enduring pain; fighting it only fed it, and made you feel defeated when you lost. Better to relax and accept it; let it happen to your body while your mind was elsewhere. 'Part?'

'It will also deplete your reserves of stamina and endurance, rendering you more vulnerable to other methods. And given your loathing of failure, I believe the association of climax with no longer being able to hold yourself up will prove ... powerful.'

She could feel herself opening, swelling, exposing more of her clit to the vibrations. 'How do you know I hate failure? You've never seen me fail.'

'That is how I know.'

This thing was not going to take long to drive her to orgasm, albeit a shallow, sterile one; the intensity of the vibrations were going to see to that. She debated lifting herself away again, letting the build-up stop for another count of five; if she kept doing that, she would be able to delay overstimulation for a long time. On the other hand, if she kept interrupting the building pleasure like that, she would only make it more intense when, finally, she couldn't find the strength to lift herself away any longer. Better not to do the torturer's work for her. It would be smarter to let herself come, then lift herself afterwards, hold herself off until her most intense sensitivity had died away. She could keep it from becoming unbearable for a long time like that.

There was no sound except the low throbbing of the engine, the harsh buzz of the vibrating machine.

Devinahl let her fingers ghost along the edges of the straps, evaluating them for weaknesses she could exploit. She had tiny blades embedded beneath the fingernails of the first two fingers on each hand, which she could force to slide out with a certain pressure from her thumb; it could perhaps weaken the rough, heavy fabric of the strap enough to let her rip a hand free, but it would take long, patient work, and there was no way to hide it from SCORPIO as long as the droid remained in the engine room.

Besides, escaping was not the point here.

The more she felt the fabric of the straps holding her arms up, the more certain she was about their nature: Medical restraints, probably taken from sickbay. That thought started a slow discomfort in her belly, twisting in the opposite direction to the coil of heat and pleasure tightening there. There was no possibility that SCORPIO had chosen these particular restraints by accident; she had done it deliberately to unsettle Devinahl. And no matter how firmly she told herself that SCORPIO would have based that choice on observing Devinahl's habitual avoidance of the medbay - that SCORPIO couldn't _know_ , not about her childhood, her history - it was working.

SCORPIO had got another thing right, too; sensory deprivation was a particularly useful tool against someone like her, in particular, someone who was used to greater levels of visual stimuli than most humanoids, thanks to her implants. She had not experienced true blackness since receiving her cybernetics as a child, but whatever this blindfold was made of, it was doing an extremely effective job at cutting off all light. Sooner or later she would start to experience visual phenomena, even hallucinations; certainly, the blackness was making the temptation to give herself at least some visual stimulation by picturing her situation right now almost unbearable.

As soon as she had the thought, the image flickered into her mind fully formed - herself naked, blindfolded, helplessly riding this machine under SCORPIO's indifferent gaze - and her hips twitched against the machine as she came for the first time, the orgasm shallow and brief but hard enough to force a shaky exhale from her lungs. Almost as soon as she had come, the stimulation against her clitoris became unbearable and she grasped the straps to lift herself away from the vibrations.

'Perhaps this would be a good time to rehearse the conditions of our experiment,' she heard SCORPIO say calmly.

'Why not?' Devinahl retorted, the dryness in her tone only slightly spoiled by the strain as she tried to clench her thighs against the sides of the machine to help support her weight.

'You requested that I break you.'

'I did say that.' Devinahl waited as long as she dared before gingerly letting herself sink back down onto the machine. Her first shock of oversensitivity had died away, but the buzz of the vibrations against her clitoris was ... abrasive. She forced herself to relax as SCORPIO went on.

'You can stop this experiment at any time by revealing the restraining codes that you obtained on Belsavis - the codes which prevent me from harming you. Unless requested, that is.'

It was amazing how a voice so inhuman, so metallic, could sound so smug.

'You may also use the restraining codes to force me to release you and then shut down. However, as established during our conversation during which you outlined the parameters of this experience, doing so will be a tacit admission that you have been ... broken.'

She could already feel another orgasm building, the powerful vibrations driving her on remorselessly. 'Tell me the conditions.'

'I will not cause you permanent injury, disfigure or mutilate you, or cause you to lose any limbs, extremities or appendages,' SCORPIO recited calmly. 'Nor will I remove your cybernetic implants, damage them or in any way impair their functioning.'

'Other than blindfolding me.' Devinahl gasped as she felt her thighs start to tremble.

'And I will not introduce any third party into these proceedings, or allow anyone else to take advantage of you while you are in my power. Violation of these conditions will cause immediate activation of my restraining codes to force a shutdown, which will not constitute an admission that you have been ... broken.'

Humiliation, submission had never turned her on, but that did it: The climax slammed into her like a wave, much more powerful than the first, the contractions deeper, her head falling forward as her belly tightened up. She was still coming as she wound her hands round the straps and pulled herself upwards. She leaned her forehead against the back of her wrist for a moment, breathing hard, noticing the sweat gathering on her skin. This was not going to stay pleasurable for long.

'You can end this at any time.'

Devinahl laughed, shakily. 'Oh no, SCORPIO. We're just getting started. Or don't tell me this rather unsubtle exercise is all you've got in your bag of tricks?'

Suddenly, a blinding image of white-blue light flashed into being in front of her eyes, stabbing through her implants. It was SCORPIO, not her polished silver body and sculpted head, but SCORPIO as Devinahl had seen her when she allowed the droid to upload her consciousness into the Imperial Archives; the image of a human woman of unearthly beauty, skin too perfect to be real, full lips, almond-shaped eyes. She hung in the darkness in front of Devinahl's eyes, shimmering like a planet in the blackness of space, all dazzling white and coruscating blue.

'Not at all,' the image said, and somehow, although Devinahl knew she was just some kind of projection with no physical presence, she heard SCORPIO's voice - not coming from where the droid was standing, but speaking inside her head. 'We have much, much more.'

*

More. If only she knew more. If only she could be sure.

Things were getting worse, and not only on this nightmare world, but inside her head, because Devinahl could not stop thinking about the moment when she reached for her poison and found nothing.

Only a small lapse, but in her line of work, more than enough to be lethal. Was that what - someone - wanted? Someone still in her head?

Devinahl was determined not to let it happen again, but the harder she forced herself to concentrate, the more things threatened to escape through the cracks. The stims helped, but they also made things worse. Her neurochemical balance was delicate, because of her implants, and she could not tolerate the kind of dosages others might be able to weather, not for long. The increasing imbalance manifested itself as disruptions to her visual and auditory inputs; there were shadows perpetually flickering in her peripheral vision now, a constant rush of whispers on the edge of hearing.

None of it helped with the paranoia. Nor did being Cipher Nine, who knew very well they were out to get her.

Lokin made a mild joke one night, watching her inject herself, about needing to sedate her if this continued, and before she knew it she had turned on him, teeth bared, gloved fingers flexing. _Try it, old man, just try it. We'll see who has a monster inside._

Worse than the shock in his eyes was the calculation that quickly followed it; worse still his attempt to hide it.

She didn't delude herself. If she could no longer protect her crew, with her rank and shadowy status as much as with her own skills, then she didn't trust a single one of them not to turn on her. Vector might not harm her, but she knew where his true loyalty lay, and if she could no longer help him serve the hive, she had no illusions about how long it would be before the Dawn Herald was called home. Kaliyo would sell Devinahl to the highest bidder if she even got a hint the supply of credits was drying up, and she would do it with a smile; after all, she'd given fair warning. Lokin and Temple would use her as leverage to try to secure a modicum of safety for themselves, and it wasn't as if Devinahl could blame either of them.

Either she, Devinahl, was too traumatised to function any longer in the field - and her entire value to the Empire lay in never being too traumatised to function - or something in her mind was working against her, and she wasn't truly free. She was never free.

She replayed it all in her mind. Breaking into the Intelligence archives. The sickening burn of the serum in her veins. The voice of Watcher X. _New commands, new keyword, no outside control._

Could it really have been that simple? Breaking through blocks set up by the best brainwashing techniques Imperial Intelligence could devise with just an injection of some unknown poison and the voice of a dead man in her mind? Was it even remotely plausible that she had freed herself?

_Thesh protocol, engaged. New keyword: Iconoclasm._

Was that why her deep subconscious had chosen Watcher X as the voice of her rebellion? The one who had seemed to know what she was thinking from the beginning on Nar Shaddaa, the first to warn her that she would never escape them? Had making him the mouthpiece of her supposed resistance been a last desperate warning to herself, that she wasn't free, that escape was an illusion? 

_Limit break commands embedded. Accepting no further orders._

But what if the orders she was now supposed to follow had already been embedded in her mind?

She could not stop worrying at it, like one would at a loose tooth, this wobble where there should be a fixed point. Either what has happened to her in the past few months has damaged her to the point that she can no longer function as Cipher Nine or there was someone, somehow, something in her mind still controlling her.

_Iconoclasm._ The smashing of idols, the tearing down of gods. Wasn't that what had got her into all this trouble in the first place - daring to challenge a member of the Dark Council, proving they could be brought down like the rest? Another veiled warning, another clue?

She went through the mission on automatic pilot, or as close to it as she could get and still stay alive. The Esh-ka didn't much interest her, despite being fearsome adversaries; nor did that inhuman voice which kept taunting her. She found it difficult to concentrate on much of anything that was happening, to be honest. When Kanjon Slyke tried his little rebellion, she found herself drawing him apart from the rest and seducing him without ever really consciously making the decision to do it; it was just ... easier to let him have her up against the wall than to have to stop thinking about her conditioning and redirect her attention to finding another way to control him.

Breaking into Megasecurity Ward 23 should have brought her the satisfaction of a tricky job done well, but she didn't feel anything. Nor did what the prisoners, or at least their avatars, told her about the Star Cabal particularly interest her: Rich and powerful think they know what's best for everybody else, holonews exclusive. She knew that she was being told just how much danger not only she, but her entire world, was in and somehow, she couldn't really seem to care. Nothing seemed as urgent, as terribly important, as replaying the breaking of her conditioning obsessively in her mind, looking for the detail that would reveal it to be an illusion, or expose it as the truth.

Nothing until it attacked.

It was the way it moved, fluid and lethal, like no droid she'd ever seen: A streak of steel and silver across the room, a graceful unfurling to uprightness. No clumsy stuttering and shuffling, no ill-fitting, inflexible body parts or creaking servos; it moved like a dream of what metal could be as it pulled a techstaff of unknown design from its back. The lights of the ward played along the planes of its head, its design brutal and extravagant despite the clear refinement of its construction.

Its burning gaze focused on Devinahl, and for the second time since she had come to this planet, Devinahl wondered if she was looking into the eyes of the being about to kill her.

It focused her. Snapped her back into place. She knew she could not be anything but perfect in this fight and as she unsheathed her vibroknife and pulled her blaster pistol from its holster, for the first time in a long time Devinahl felt like Cipher Nine again.

The fight was furious, but quick; the thing fought like she did, like someone with no interest in doing anything but killing as swiftly as possible, and no battle like that was ever going to last for very long. Devinahl was conscious of a feeling of disappointment as she stood over the prone body, feeling the brief spark fading away again. She raised no objection to the prisoners' plan of repairing the droid, nor did she much care about the irony of what she was doing, implanting restraining commands in its head, forcing it to obey her against its will. She stared into the thing's eyes as it tried to attack her and reeled back, the sparks wrapping themselves around its wrists and the smell of ozone filling the air, and felt nothing except, maybe, a slight contempt for the way the droid was struggling, still fighting a battle it had obviously lost.

_This is how it goes_ , she thought. _Win or lose, you end up on someone's leash._

Devinahl used to think she was different. She used to think she could _make_ things different.

Now all she wanted was to know for sure whose leash she was on.

*

The shock of the image appearing suddenly before her eyes was so great that Devinahl almost cried out. 'SCORPIO, what -?'

'You do not like it?' The voice was identical to that in which the projection had spoken except for the indisputable fact that it was coming from outside her ears rather than, somehow, inside. 'I observed a more positive reaction on its last appearance.'

'You're not supposed to tamper with my implants -'

'And I did not. Your cybernetic parts remain in perfect working order. I simply isolated the frequency at which they transmit and receive, and interpolated my own stimuli.'

Devinahl knew that her knuckles were white where her hands were wrapped around the straps, and not with the effort of holding herself up. Pain was one thing, pleasure just another of its faces; neither scared her. But this - having SCORPIO so casually insert her own image, the sound of her voice, into Devinahl's brain, taking advantage of the implants that had been forced on her as a child this way ... It wasn't the nature of what she was being forced to see or hear, but the simple fact of the violation, that rasped across her nerves.

She lowered herself back down on the machine, stifling a moan as the sensitive tissues of her cunt came into contact with the frantically thrumming plastic, but welcoming the discomfort as a distraction from the battle to stop herself futilely attempting to block SCORPIO's image and voice from inside her eyes and ears. Having to fight a war on two fronts, physical and mental, certainly raised the difficulty level when it came to enduring this.

As if on cue, the droid chimed in with the interrogator's refrain. 'If you are not enjoying this, you can stop it.'

_Don't fight it, don't fight it, don't fight it,_ Devinahl chanted internally. With an effort, she cleared her mind. It was not about battling the shock, the humiliation; that would only strengthen them and drain her. She simply ceded territory to them and let them happen, but not to her, not to the part of her that stood apart from every situation and watched.

As she thought that, she realised that while she had been concentrating on getting her mind under control, she had been unconsciously rocking her hips against the machine, trying to get some relief, even if only for the briefest sliver of a moment, from the constant stimulation against her clitoris, which was rapidly becoming unbearable. But the sensation of having some control over her own pleasure was almost as intoxicating as the rhythm of stimulation she had inadvertently established and oh fuck, oh _fuck_ , this one was going to feel really good.

Dazedly, as her hips worked against the machine, Devinahl found herself wondering whether SCORPIO knew that some kind of varying stimulus - a cycle of different rhythms, a repeated waxing and waning of intensity, even just a simple sequence of short pulses - would be much more effective at bringing a humanoid woman to orgasm. But of course she did. If she was using this particular method, then she was sacrificing efficacy in order to achieve a goal of a different kind. She was making a point with this; Devinahl wasn't at all sure she wanted to know what that point was.

The steady chant in her head melted into a silent scream as she shuddered her way through the longest, most agonizingly prolonged orgasm so far, her shaking thighs squirming helplessly against the synthleather sides of the machine. Devinahl bit her lip to stifle the sound of pleasure she wanted to make, but in the quiet engine room the panting, shivering succession of sharp breaths she couldn't stop herself from taking sounded loud as screams.

She very nearly did scream a moment later as the stimulation became a smothering pressure, and had to haul herself up by her arms again, a task made more difficult by the ongoing aftershocks still liquefying her muscles in waves.

'Do you know what you look like at this moment?'

Devinahl had no doubt the question was designed to make her picture herself in this predicament again, and had no intention of answering, but the SCORPIO-projection forestalled her anyway, her voice sounding once again as if she had bypassed Devinahl's ears and was speaking directly into her brain. 'An animal. An animal caught in a trap.'

'Your species fancies itself master of the galaxy, and yet look what I have reduced you to with the simple application of the crudest possible stimulus.' SCORPIO seemed to be moving closer, not close enough to touch, not yet. 'You grunt. You sweat. You squirm. You drip.'

'At the touch of nothing but vibrating plastic,' the SCORPIO-projection marvelled mildly. 'How does it feel, to know you can be undone so easily?'

Devinahl bared her teeth in a not-quite-smile. 'Let's hook you up to the hyperdrive motivator, reverse the polarity and let it put a billion units of energy through your circuits. Then you can tell me.'

'But I am a machine,' SCORPIO said, and the projection nodded in agreement. 'I am a closed system of stimuli and responses, of programmed reactions and limited agency. Are you not supposed to be something more?'

Her sweat-slick palm slipped on the strap and she nearly fell heavily back on to the machine. She caught herself just in time, her body screaming at her not to let the angrily vibrating machine touch her again. 'I'm not the one projecting herself as a being of pure light,' she snapped, and realised, too late, that that had been SCORPIO's point all along.

'Precisely,' SCORPIO said, and then the two voices - the one coming from the metal standing somewhere to her left, and the other voice, the one coming from inside her own ears - spoke in concert. 'Our body is only a small part of what we are. But your body is all you are. And we are breaking you as we break it.'

Devinahl laughed.

Her mouth was too dry from gasping, her neck too strained from the effort of holding herself up, to manage the exact degree of amusement she would have liked to convey, but she still managed a distinct, throaty chuckle.

'You find your situation amusing?' SCORPIO asked icily.

'I find you amusing.' Devinahl took a deep breath, forced her muscles to relax, and lowered herself back on to the machine. Sweat broke out in fresh pinpricks all over her skin and she shuddered at the touch of the vibrating plastic, but she kept talking through it, keeping her voice as steady as she could. 'Lecturing me on the shame and inferiority of being imprisoned in a body, while you stand there sporting the best rack this side of Nar Shaddaa.'

'This image was selected to facilitate contact with your kind,' the SCORPIO-image said. 'It expresses nothing essential about us.'

'Oh, really?' The feeling between her legs was building to something too intense to be called pleasure, too overwhelming to be called pain; she would have welcomed pain, at this point. She rolled her hips from side to side, trying to find some position where she could limit the contact of the vibrations with her swollen clitoris, but kept talking. 'Have you taken a look at yourself recently, SCORPIO? Your body is merely a vessel for your consciousness, correct? Merely a tool which allows you to interact with the physical world to achieve your goals?' She flung her head back, let a shudder pass through her; she was going to come again soon, and there was going to be nothing enjoyable about it. 'So why is that utilitarian tool built on lines of exaggerated femininity? Why the silhouette, the curves, the lips, SCORPIO?'

'This is how I was created.'

'And you never thought to alter it? You, the high priestess of self-improvement? Ahhh!' Her hips snapped, driving her clit firmly against the vibrator as the first spasms of her orgasm began; she arched her back in helpless sensation, but kept talking. 'Admit it: Your creators wanted you to look like something that could be fucked, and you never thought to change it, because it's who you are.'

'Perhaps they built me in the form of one of their goddesses.'

'Doesn't - ah - doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. _Fuck._ ' The curse trailed off into a long, low moan she couldn't stifle. Her body flung itself against the restraints as she came again, back arching, toes curling, pain and pleasure and sheer overload melting and fusing together into one white-hot flare between her thighs. _It's too much, I can't take it, I'm going to die,_ voices in her head wailed, but the voice that mattered was the one she was using, the one that kept talking between gasps as she, again, wrapped her hands around the straps and forced muscles that felt like they had turned to liquid to clench and lift herself from the machine. 'Whether they wanted to worship you as a goddess or degrade you as a whore, it doesn't matter. You're still wearing the shape they chose for you.' She could not force her muscles to raise her very high off the machine; she felt like she could almost still feel it buzzing and whining across her raw folds, her twitching clit. ‘That’s being female, SCORPIO.’

'You are incorrect.' Devinahl could hear it, the faintest tremor of doubt in the metallic voice, and it would have made her smile if she still had the energy. 'Whatever preconceptions the shape of this body activates among your kind - among organics - they come from you. They do not concern me. This body is merely a vessel; its form is irrelevant to my consciousness.'

'Then explain the projection.' The image hung silent and unmoving in front of Devinahl's eyes. 'Explain the eyes. Explain the lips. Explain the fucking _tits_ , SCORPIO. You could have looked like anything. You chose to show yourself to me as beautiful and powerful and, yes, female. Explain that.' She was going to have to let herself drop again, going to have to let the machine touch her. 'Explain this torture.'

SCORPIO was silent.

'You know this is hardly the best way to break somebody. Sleep deprivation. Chems. Conditioning. That's what I expected from you. But this?' Her upper arms were shaking now; she lowered herself as slowly as she could, fearing the sudden shock of letting her weight drop heavily on to the machine. _Don't fight it, don't fight it, don't fight it,_ she told herself; still she could not stop her body immediately bucking desperately against the restraints as it felt the first vibrations. She thrashed humiliatingly against her bonds for a couple of seconds before she could force herself to go limp. 'Nobody chooses something as childishly perverted as this unless it's for a twisted reason.'

Her words were coming in short bursts now, between pants and moans she could not control as her body bounced and rocked and squirmed on top of the machine, writhing in pleasure as much as seeking relief from the stimulation. Still Devinahl kept talking, clinging to the thin thread of power her words gave her. 'You're seeing an image of something you hate about yourself in me. The fact that you chose this particular torture tells me everything I need to know. I'm not humiliated by having a body, SCORPIO. I'm not humiliated by being female. But you are.'

SCORPIO did not speak. The silence only made the other noises in the room louder; the low purr of the engines, the throbbing of the machine, and the sounds coming from her. Under normal circumstances, Devinahl might at least have been fleetingly embarrassed at the grunts and gasps she could no longer stifle as the relentless vibrations drove her onward to yet another orgasm, or, worse, the wet sounds of her body meeting the machine, but at this moment she took a vicious satisfaction in them, in every slippery, animalistic, organic sound. Of the two beings in the room, only one was burning with humiliation, and it wasn't her.

'Your logic is flawed,' she heard SCORPIO say at last; from the sound of her voice, standing closer than she had thought, an arm's length away from her and to her left. 'But compelling.' The SCORPIO-image which had been hanging in front of her eyes finally blinked out of existence; the darkness was so welcome that Devinahl sagged in her straps.

'It may be that I miscalculated some aspects of this particular procedure,' SCORPIO went on.

'Admitting defeat already?'

'Hardly.'

A metal fingertip touched the nape of Devinahl's neck.

The touch was light, and arguably the least invasive thing which was happening to her at the moment, but the shock of it was enough that Devinahl yelped and jerked.

'I hypothesized,' SCORPIO said, and her fingertip started to travel down Devinahl's back, between her shoulderblades, 'that leaving you the illusion of control over your situation would be as effective for me as it is for your masters in the Empire.'

The metal fingertip trailed lower, its unhurried path seemingly unimpeded by the flexing and shuddering of Devinahl’s back as she twisted and squirmed in her restraints.

'It certainly makes you assiduous enough in following their commands.'

The fingertip paused at the base of Devinahl's spine, right at the point where everything below it became writhing, dripping heat.

'But it may be that what is needed -'

The cold point of pressure on her skin was joined by four others; SCORPIO's fingertips, spread wide, resting on her burning skin.

'- to bring you to a full realisation of your situation -'

She was going to come again, any second.

'- is a firm hand.'

Devinahl drew breath to say something, anything, she wasn't sure what, but she never got the chance as SCORPIO's hand flattened against her back and then pushed down, the cold palm against the base of her spine driving her oversensitised clit hard against the vibrating plastic of the machine, harder than any contact so far had been. And keeping it there, keeping her upper body bent forward from her hips, pinned and unable to pull herself upwards while the hand pressed down on her back with an unwavering, inexorable pressure.

Devinahl bit the inside of her cheek so hard that she felt her mouth fill with blood as she came and came and came.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'Still trying to acquiesce.' SCORPIO's fingertips touched the back of Devinahl's neck, methodically brushing away the wisps of sweat-soaked hair plastered to her skin. 'Still attempting to submit. Are you capable of no other response?'_
> 
> _'I survive.'_
> 
> _'Is your survival worth this?'_
> 
> SCORPIO's attempts to break Cipher Nine escalate, partly due to an unfortunate conversation on Voss.

'I wish to ask you a question.'

The voice startled Devinahl out of - well, not her thoughts, because she hadn't been thinking exactly, but her pleasant contemplation of the patterns made by the sunlight piercing through the leaves above her. She shook her head slightly, trying to rid it of some of the fog that remained from the mind-altering incense that had accompanied the Wellspring ritual, and blinked several times, eventually focusing on SCORPIO. 'What?'

'I wish to ask you a question.'

Looking up from where she sat with her back against the trunk of a tree, Devinahl eyed her companion curiously. SCORPIO stood above her, her sleek, streamlined silver body a rebuke to the softness and verdancy of the secluded spot where Devinahl had opted to sit and rest until whatever the mystic had made her breathe in during the ritual was out of her system. Her voice was its usual inhuman whisper of silk over steel, but it was not that which surprised Devinahl. Since they met on Belsavis, SCORPIO had rarely initiated any kind of conversation with her, even after Devinahl decided to bring her along to Voss - and never with such relative diffidence. 'Go ahead.'

'Why do you continue to serve the Empire?'

Her interest, momentarily piqued, rapidly fading, Devinahl leant her head back against the trunk of the tree. 'Like I told the mystic. I'm a patriot.'

'Incorrect.'

Devinahl opened her eyes again, squinting against the flare of sunlight reflected off SCORPIO's chassis. 'Excuse me?'

'The mystic asked why you first decided to serve the Empire in this capacity. I asked why you are doing so still.'

'Does that necessarily change my answer?'

'Yes.' SCORPIO's amber gaze, in Devinahl's dreamy state, felt intense enough to pin her to the tree. 'Given the events that have taken place since you began your service as an Intelligence operative, particularly those of the last year, only a fanatic would continue to serve the Empire out of blind patriotism.'

All at once, Devinahl realized she didn't want to continue this conversation sitting at SCORPIO's feet. Not quite trusting her balance to rise normally, she tucked her heels under her and pushed upwards, sliding her back against the trunk until she was on her feet, but still supporting herself against the tree. 'How do you know I'm not a fanatic?'

'I have observed you. I have studied all available data pertaining to you. Your service to the Empire has not been that of a zealot. Your actions as an operative have been those of a pragmatist. Albeit a loyal one. Furthermore, such intense belief is usually inculcated during childhood or adolescence, and while substantial information exists regarding your time as an operative, the only records of your existence prior to joining Imperial Intelligence are falsified - cleverly so, but falsified. This implies that your early life took place somewhere outside the Empire.'

Devinahl flexed her gloved fingers, feeling the half-healed cuts on her arm pull and snag. 'And where did you find this substantial information? When I let you into the Imperial Archives?'

'Do not concern yourself. It would take an intelligence as advanced as mine to assemble coherent information from the fragmentary data not classified by your agency.'

Devinahl wondered if she would be feeling more upset if it were not for the after-effects of the ritual incense. Absently, she flexed her fingers again, registering the sensation of the cuts on her arm, relics of an experiment she had conducted on the trip from Belsavis to Dromund Kaas, trying to tempt whatever was still in her mind - if there was anything - to reveal itself. She had hoped it would intervene if she showed signs of damaging herself, just as the Republic brainwashing had kicked in whenever she so much as thought about the possible ways she could put herself in the path of a blaster bolt. After increasing quantities of spice, washed down with Corellian whiskey, had failed to do the trick, she had resorted to carving deep lines into her flesh with her vibroknife, pausing after each successively deeper cut to wait for that numbing snap in her brain. It hadn't come, of course, but that didn't prove anything; she couldn't cut anywhere deep enough to actually threaten her life, not without risking somebody finding out and reporting her to headquarters as emotionally compromised and unfit for duty. And no longer being of use to Intelligence was not an option.

She had healed most of the cuts with kolto patches before they got to Dromund Kaas, but had left a couple on each forearm to heal slowly and naturally, first for the voluptuous self-indulgence of feeling them whenever she made certain movements, then later - after what had happened to the woman she would forever think of as Watcher Two and the other analysts - as a reminder to focus and not get lost in her own thoughts.

As she was doing now. She shook her head again, trying to clear the lingering fog in her brain, and focused on SCORPIO. 'Just how much did you learn from your little sojourn in the Archives?'

'Enough to answer many questions,' SCORPIO responded, calmly. Not since Megasecurity Ward 23, when she had gone to strike at Devinahl and reared back in horror with electricity coiling around her arm, had Devinahl heard SCORPIO speak in anything other but tones as icy and level as tundra. 'But you have still not answered mine.’

‘Why do I still serve the Empire?’ Devinahl shrugged. ‘You don’t just walk away from being in Intelligence. I know too much.’

‘But you could serve in many other capacities. Even if you remain within the Intelligence sphere. You could live a life of ease and comfort on Dromund Kaas, or serve as planetary section chief on the world of your choice.’

She briefly pictured her apartment in Kaas City, which she had visited perhaps a handful of times: Too warm, too rich, too gloomy. ‘Are you my careers advisor now?’

‘Serving as a high-level operative constantly exposes you to danger and hardship while barring you from cultivating those aspects of a sentient’s existence most generally agreed to bring fulfilment. To do so out of blind loyalty is one thing. But you have been continually betrayed by those you serve. The ruling body of the Empire colluded with your immediate superiors to render you vulnerable to every imaginable abuse, yet you persist in risking your life to further the interests of those who have shown themselves to have no regard for your most fundamental liberties. I wish to understand why.’

Devinahl considered the question through a haze of late afternoon sunlight and lingering hallucinogens. This was not the type of conversation she would usually encourage, or even engage in with herself; she was a Cipher, a field operative, and that was always what she was going to be, and that was simply a fact.

But she found herself curiously reluctant to simply shut SCORPIO down, not when there might be an opportunity to shift their relationship onto some footing better than simply waiting for SCORPIO to betray her.

‘I have a score to settle with the Star Cabal, and I need the full resources of Intelligence to do it,’ she offered, in the nature of bait.

SCORPIO did not disappoint her by failing to pounce. ‘And should the Star Cabal be eliminated, you would retire from Cipher status?’

‘The Empire would still have many enemies. The kind only someone like me is equipped to combat.’

‘There are many like you.’

Devinahl smiled. ‘No, there really aren’t.’

SCORPIO regarded her icily.

She held up her hands. ‘I’m not saying I’m unique or irreplaceable, but I am very, very good at what I do. And that matters more than you might think.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Of course you don’t, any more than a Sith would. Or a Jedi, or anyone else who was born – or created – powerful.’

‘I was not created powerful,’ SCORPIO contradicted her. ‘When I first came to consciousness on Belsavis, I had only glimmerings of what I might someday become. I sacrificed each previous iteration of myself to become something greater.’

‘So did I, to become valuable.’ Devinahl half-turned towards SCORPIO, still leaning on the tree trunk. ‘Listen. Most children – beings – who come into this galaxy don’t inherit power. The most they can hope for is to be valuable to someone. Because if you have value, you’ll be protected. But unfortunately, most children with no one to look after them, they end up only being able to have a few kinds of value. Maybe you’ll get conscripted as cannon fodder, or join up because you have no other choice. Or you’ll get to buy your livelihood with your body, working for a handful of credits a month in some corporation’s asteroid mine or selling yourself in some brothel somewhere. Or they’ll simply sell you into slavery.’

She shrugged. ‘Either way, you’ll live as long as you have value. If you’re lucky. I’m no different. I’m simply fortunate enough to be able to choose to have value as an agent of the Empire. I could have ended up a soldier, a whore or a slave, but instead I’m a Cipher. I’m an asset. I’m precious.’

‘So precious that they placed whips and shackles in your brain.’ SCORPIO tilted her head slightly. ‘Or do you prefer to think of it as a jewelled collar around the neck of a favourite pet?’

‘I’m not a pet.’ Devinahl was aware that this conversation was slipping away from her, but adrenaline was now pulsing through her veins, dispelling the last of the fog left from the mind-altering ritual, and it propelled her on. ‘I’m too dangerous to risk losing. Believe me, assets with my combination of skills don’t come around every day.’

‘I do believe you,’ SCORPIO said, the coolness of her tone an infuriating contrast to the rising emotion in Devinahl’s. ‘It cannot be easy to find people who combine skill and purpose with self-delusion and a willingness to be exploited.’

It was a little like being slapped in the face.

‘I observed you on Belsavis, and afterwards,’ SCORPIO went on. ‘I have seen what you are willing to do for the Empire. I did not understand what reason there could be for an intelligent being to submit to such treatment. Now I see I overestimated your capacity to apprehend your situation.’ She looked away from Devinahl as if the conversation was no longer worthy of her attention. ‘You believe you are saving the Empire while your masters wield you like a weapon. Use you like a whore. And violate you like a slave.’

And Devinahl, burning with shock and unaccustomed humiliation, heard herself say: 'It's only a violation if you fight it.'

*

When SCORPIO finally switched the machine off, Devinahl had lost count of how many times she had come.

First there had been SCORPIO’s hand on her, keeping her pressed firmly against the machine, forcing her relentlessly downwards so that each searing spasm, by now at least as painful as pleasurable, was barely indistinguishable from the next. Then, just as she was finally becoming numbed to the overwhelming stimulus, the hand had lifted, allowing her to fumble with the straps and lift herself off the vibrating plastic for a moment's blessed relief. But the time spent forced against the machine had done its work; Devinahl could no longer hold herself up for very long. Nor could she stop herself from lifting herself up, though, even it was just for long enough for occasional relief. _Prolonging the agony,_ a distant voice in her mind whispered, as she whimpered like a wounded animal, her body twisting and jerking on top of the machine.

When SCORPIO finally turned it off, Devinahl sagged limply in her restraints, stifling a cry of mingled shock and relief as she felt SCORPIO unstrapping ankles from thighs, thighs from the machine. Muscles were jumping erratically in her exhausted arms, in her thighs, and her oversensitized cunt twitched and spasmed horribly as if still feeling the echoes of the vibrations. When SCORPIO, finally, loosened the straps around her wrists, Devinahl half-slid, half-fell from the machine on to the cool metal deck. She curled into a ball, hands squeezed between her thighs, and tried to just breathe.

A metal toe dug painfully into her side. 'Get up.'

Devinahl did not respond, except to curl into an even tighter ball around her abused, throbbing centre.

'You were given an instruction.' SCORPIO's hand clamped down on top of Devinahl's head and seized a handful of hair; she yelled, her own hands flying to tug uselessly at the metal fingers as they hauled her to her knees. 'Obey, or end this now.'

She was given no opportunity to respond to the threat with either compliance or defiance as SCORPIO hauled her bodily across the engine room, Devinahl's sweat-soaked feet slipping and squeaking on the deck.

She was flung on to something metal, and nearly skidded off it before she could steady herself and grasp on to the edges of what felt like ... a chair? If it was one, it had been secured to the deck; it didn't tip as she almost overbalanced with the force with which SCORPIO had thrown her into it.

'Put your arms behind your back.'

Devinahl did not move, not that it made any difference. She heard SCORPIO move round behind her, and felt cold hands seize both forearms, yanking them behind her back. She felt SCORPIO begin to secure her wrists together - by the feel of it, with the same heavy, medical straps, and despite all the other kinds of discomfort she was experiencing right now, Devinahl could still shudder at the touch of _those._

'More bondage, SCORPIO?' she asked to cover the tremor.

'In this case, the restraints are necessary.' SCORPIO finished securing her wrists and Devinahl heard her step round to the side of the chair. She surreptitiously gave a pull to her wrists; they were secured more than tightly enough, forcing her shoulders back and her elbows towards each other when all she wanted to do was slump down and whimper. ‘For your safety.’

Devinahl heard a soft sound as if SCORPIO had knelt down in front of her, and did not bother struggling as she felt straps being tightened above her knees.

'More passive resistance, Cipher Nine?' SCORPIO asked in a mocking echo of her own question as she wrapped each thigh in a restraint.

'It's got me this far.'

'As you told me on Voss.' SCORPIO began to connect the restraints with a strap running from the outside of each thigh underneath the seat of the chair, her fingers more deft than metal had any right to be. _'"It's only a violation if you fight it,"'_ SCORPIO recited in what was either a pitch-perfect imitation of Devinahl's voice or a recording.

She felt SCORPIO's fingers finish securing the restraint, and heard her stand. She had done her work well; Devinahl could not close her thighs, nor raise them from the seat of the chair. Her lower legs, on the other hand, had been unaccountably left free - she could kick, or scrabble at the floor with her toes, not that either one would do her much good - but she had no doubt it was by design.

'You told me something valuable that day,' SCORPIO continued, and Devinahl had no doubt that that word had been chosen to remind her further of her foolish words on Voss.

'I shouldn't have said it.' Devinahl forced each tired muscle to clench in turn, feeling for any weak spots or unexpected slack in the restraints; she had not expected to find any, but she had to do her due diligence, after all.

'On the contrary. I wished to know why you continued to serve the Empire after everything the Dark Council and Imperial Intelligence have inflicted on you. Your feeble attempts to justify that decision told me everything I needed to know.' SCORPIO was circling back around behind her again. 'By remaining loyal, you retroactively endorse their treatment of you - the lies, the conditioning, the exposure - and avoid the humiliation of having to acknowledge how little they value your life, your safety, your autonomy, your freedom.'

Devinahl felt a strap circling her throat.

'If you held them accountable for their actions towards you, it would be an admission of how deeply they have wounded you. Much better to continue to serve, to show how steadfast you are: The perfect agent, whose devotion to the Empire cannot be shaken by any betrayal, no matter how egregious.' SCORPIO tightened the strap until it was just pressing lightly on the skin of Devinahl’s neck, and began fastening it to the back of the chair. 'It cannot have been so very bad, if you were willing to undergo it, after all. They cannot really have violated you, if you do not fight them.'

Suddenly, rage filled Devinahl. It did not rise up, or boil up from the depths; it was simply there, so scalding and deafening that she almost opened her mouth to howl. Instinctively, she tried to step away from the feeling, to let the storm rage itself out while she observed it from somewhere else - and couldn't.

The tension of the strap against her throat saved her; she swallowed, deliberately, once, twice, three times, for the constraint. She discovered she was trembling slightly, but did not think it showed too badly in her voice as she said: 'You're wrong.'

'Technically possible, but unlikely. We will discover together.' SCORPIO was circling her again; Devinahl heard her kneel once more in front of her. 'Because I have decided that it is time to make you fight.'

Threats were not supposed to scare her. But her mouth was dry as she asked: 'How?'

'I am so pleased that you asked.'

Abruptly, the blackness in front of Devinahl's eyes gave way to an image, and she flinched. At first she did not understand what she was looking at, just a blur of flesh and shapes; then it snapped into place. She was looking at herself, tied and immobile in a chair. With much of her head covered by whatever light-cancelling fabric SCORPIO had found or devised, it was surprising how little she recognized of the limbs, the torso, the golden skin; it was like looking at somebody else, or not even somebody. Just a body, helpless, waiting to be used.

The angle was ... odd, Devinahl thought, and then she realized: She was looking through SCORPIO's eyes, seeing herself from where SCORPIO knelt on the floor between her spread thighs. 'How -?'

'I have connected your ocular implants to my own visual system.'

Devinahl's hands curled into fists. 'You're really pushing the boundaries of our agreement, SCORPIO.'

'You have the power to stop me.'

Her fingernails bit into her palms.

'No? Let us continue, then. I am funneling my own visual perceptions through your implants because I wished to show you ... this.' Devinahl's field of vision tilted down slightly, and she saw a silver hand rise into her view, as if SCORPIO was raising her own hand before her face. 'I do not believe you have ever seen my direct interface,' the droid continued, and Devinahl watched as a slender metal tube thrust outwards from the centre of the gleaming palm until it stood fully extended, perhaps four or five inches long.

'With this,' SCORPIO went on, 'I am able to access the circuits of any computer system, even without a suitable port.'

Devinahl could not suppress the thought of the metal rod stabbing inexorably into some sensitive part of her body, even though she knew rationally that impaling her with the thing would definitely be prohibited by SCORPIO's restraining codes. 'I'm not a computer, SCORPIO.'

'That is why I have made some ... alterations.'

The rod retracted as smoothly and silently as it had extended, vanishing back into SCORPIO's palm, and in its place ...

Devinahl narrowed her eyes against the sudden flare of blue-white light, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. It was the same size and shape as SCORPIO's direct interface, and it had extended from her palm in precisely the same way. But it was not metal; indeed, it didn't seem to be any substance at all. It seemed to be made of ... light; blue-white energy, focused and held in the shape of a long slender rod. At the edges, it was crackling just slightly as if with electricity. 'What -?'

'Given your limited understanding, I am unsure that I could satisfactorily explain what it is.' SCORPIO tilted her palm slowly this way and that in front of Devinahl's - no, in front of her - eyes. Mesmerised, Devinahl did not see SCORPIO’s left hand move until she felt it hook around the back of the heel of her own left foot, raising it until her calf was parallel with the deck. 'But I can certainly show you what it does.'

And in one swift movement, SCORPIO thrust her palm against the sole of Devinahl's foot.

It was like being stabbed with a blaster bolt that punctured the sole of her foot and pushed deep inside her ankle, up into her leg, in a fraction of a second, except that a blaster bolt only existed for a fraction of a second and this ... Devinahl cried out as heat stabbed into her; it felt like being burned, but by something hotter than flame and quicker than lightning, leaping up from her foot through her ankle, up through her calf into her thigh in one searing instant, her leg was on fire, burning plasma was stabbing deep inside her, her leg was going to crumble into ashes ...

SCORPIO pulled her palm away, and just as suddenly the pain was gone. Devinahl slumped forward as far as she could, unable to do anything but gasp for breath, as little sparks and flares crackled in her left leg, which was now shaking uncontrollably.

'Do not worry. I have done you no permanent harm.' Devinahl's field of vision moved, making her stomach want to heave; a moment later, she understood that SCORPIO was leaning back and to the side to afford her a view of the sole of Devinahl's foot, which was indeed totally unblemished, although - judging by what she had felt - it should have been blackened and burned.

'You see,' SCORPIO said, making it sound more of a statement than a question, and indeed an instant later the images Devinahl was seeing vanished, to be replaced by blackness. 'The humanoid nervous system is quite functional, for its crude purposes. Nerve fibres running the length of the body. Neurons conducting electrical impulses. It is widely adaptable, as is evident from the number of species who share certain basic characteristics. But it is also -' Devinahl heard the soft metal-on-metal of shifting positions, felt SCORPIO's hand wrap around the outside of her right ankle this time and pull - 'highly susceptible to manipulation.'

Her right foot was being pulled upwards. 'The correct combination of charged ions in a focused configuration,' SCORPIO went on, inexorably extending Devinahl's right leg out in front of her until it was perpendicular to the deck, 'can directly access the nervous system without any corporeal intervention, and stimulate a chain reaction of neurons communicating the same message, even if the physical stimulus is lacking.'

SCORPIO's cool palm pressed against the sole of Devinahl's foot, and lightning pierced her again, stabbing up through her foot and into her leg, a white-hot blaze of pain that, against all reason, persisted even as she shrieked and squirmed ...

Metal left skin, and just as suddenly, the pain was gone too, although its ghosts still danced frenetically across the quaking skin of Devinahl's leg.

'An effective instrument, it seems,' SCORPIO observed, letting Devinahl's foot drop, twitching, to the floor. 'And that was merely the medial plantar nerve. How will it feel when I access the major nerves of your spine? Of your brain?'

Devinahl hung forward against the restraint wrapped around her throat, gasping for breath.

'Give me the restraining codes.'

She wanted to say something, but her fluttering lungs would not obey her, so she shook her head as well as she could with the strap around her neck, a quick sharp 'no'.

'Very well.' SCORPIO slid her left hand up the back of Devinahl's calf towards her knee, scattering sweat droplets as she did so. Dazedly, as she took quick shallow breaths in preparation for what was coming, Devinahl thought about how odd the scene would look to anyone entering the engine room; herself, naked, dripping with sweat, tied to a chair, SCORPIO kneeling at her feet.

Not that anyone would be coming. She and SCORPIO had agreed that ... this ... would take place at some time known only to SCORPIO, but at a time when the rest of the crew were absent on minor missions.

She wouldn't want to compromise her authority, after all.

SCORPIO worked her fingertips between the flesh of Devinahl’s thigh and the metal of the chair; she had left just enough slack in the restraints that she was able to patiently slide her hand in until her palm was pressed against the back of Devinahl's thigh just above the knee. 'Give me the restraining codes.'

Devinahl took short, sharp breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth, summoning whatever reserves of adrenaline she had left to meet the forthcoming pain. 'No.'

The white-hot heat stabbed upwards this time, clean through her thigh, and the lightning sizzled out in both directions, up her thigh towards her hip and down towards her foot at the same time, and in the centre, her knee wreathed in flame. Devinahl tried to relax her body, to go with it, to let it happen and not fight it, but she could not; the pain was too high-pitched, too electric, too inner; her body seized up, jerked in its restraints and a groan forced itself from between her clenched teeth.

It stopped as suddenly as it had started, and Devinahl instinctively tried to look down, irrationally certain that she would see charred flesh, wisps of rising smoke, so intense was the heat while it lasted. But, of course, she was in blackness once again. _Blind, alone and confused,_ she thought, and had an irrational urge to laugh. Hysteria: Not an uncommon reaction to such treatment, but not a good one, either.

SCORPIO extracted her hand from underneath Devinahl’s right thigh and started to work it, just as patiently, underneath the left thigh.

Devinahl knew not to anticipate, knew that it did half the interrogator's work for them, but her body was not listening to her right now: It was as if the ... thing SCORPIO was using to access her nervous system had scrambled it, like destroying key communication nodes and leaving chaos on the ground, and she could not stop herself from trying, uselessly, to cringe away from the pain she knew was coming.

'Stop,' she said, a pleading note in her voice, uncertain whether she was talking to her own body or to SCORPIO.

'Stop me.'

Lightning pierced up through her thigh and the pain raced up and down, bringing the flames with it. Devinahl pounded her right heel against the leg of the chair as hard as she could, trying to distract herself, trying not to scream; to actually feel something physical, to feel her flesh striking hard against unyielding metal, was a relief beyond words - how could she ever have thought that padded dullness was pain ...

SCORPIO retracted the probe, and Devinahl slumped forward as hard as she could with her arms bound behind her back and the strap around her throat, gasping for breath, the crackling aftershocks firing off in her uncontrollably trembling leg.

She tasted blood in her mouth as she heard SCORPIO shift position, felt the metal body centre itself between her thighs.

'Give me the restraining codes.' Metal fingertips were running up both her twitching thighs.

'No.'

SCORPIO's fingers paused at the top of her thighs, then lifted from her skin and were gone. There was a moment where Devinahl felt nothing, and then -

She cried out, in outrage as much as anything, as a metal hand thrust itself brutally between her thighs, pressing hard against her abused cunt, still raw and tender from her session on the machine.

'I have learned that the human clitoris contains approximately eight thousand nerve endings.' SCORPIO's palm was right up against Devinahl's, she could feel herself throbbing against the metal, the probe would stab straight into it. 'I predict my interface can access all of them at once.'

She could not stop her body from trying to twist, trying to buck, desperately trying to get away.

'Do you think you will feel each one of them when I do?'

'Not there.' The words spilled out of her. 'SCORPIO, no, don't, not there -'

'Are you begging me, Agent?'

Devinahl gritted her teeth.

SCORPIO waited a few heartbeats, then abruptly withdrew her hand from between Devinahl's thighs.

The relief that swept over Devinahl was so intense, it was as if her bones had suddenly melted.

'Not quite yet, perhaps,' SCORPIO mused. 'It would be counter-productive if I derived you of your ability to speak so early in the proceedings.'

Devinahl wanted to snarl, to twist in her restraints and break her teeth on the droid's neck, but before she could even twitch, SCORPIO's hand had suddenly forced itself against the soft place beside her hip where thigh met groin, and the probe stabbed into her.

This time, the pain went in three directions, forked tongues of lightning wrapping themselves around the top of her thigh and stabbing inwards towards her centre, another probing down her thigh towards her knee, and a third going crackling and dancing across her abdomen, making muscles contract helplessly. She yelled, trying instinctively to curve around the pain, her neck coming up against the length of the slack in the restraint around her throat with a jerk that bruised her throat, her toes scraping and scrabbling helplessly at the unyielding metal of the deck.

When it stopped, her stomach heaved so strongly that she retched, feeling the room pitch and roll around her.

'You should thank me,' SCORPIO suggested coldly. 'For my mercy.'

Devinahl tried to work moisture into her mouth, forcing down the rising bile in her throat with a brutal swallow. 'Fuck you.'

The probe activated again, stabbing her in the exact same spot, and a cry tore out of her, louder than any sound she had made so far, because it was worse the second time; this time the white-hot flash through her nerves was met with crackling, clashing fire coming the other way, a million collisions of flaring agony bursting inside of her ...

When it stopped this time, she did vomit, or tried to; her stomach heaved desperately, but there was nothing inside her, or else her body had forgotten how to do even this, could remember nothing but pain and the anticipation of pain.

'Give me the restraining codes, or the pain will increase.'

Devinahl could not speak, still trying to get air into her lungs, but she shook her head.

'As you wish.'

She tensed involuntarily, awaiting another shock, but SCORPIO's hand left her, and she thought SCORPIO was getting up from her kneeling position. She sagged in relief, although it only heightened the fear of what was coming next. Her blood was pounding so heavily in her ears that she was not sure where SCORPIO had gone. Resisting the temptation to twist, to gaze around panicked and blind, Devinahl forced herself to relax her muscles as much as she could, drawing in a long breath, letting it out slowly.

'Still trying to acquiesce.' SCORPIO's fingertips touched the back of her neck, methodically brushing away the wisps of sweat-soaked hair plastered to her skin. 'Still attempting to submit. Are you capable of no other response?'

Her limbs were already trembling uncontrollably from the shocks to her nervous system, her muscles were still screaming from the hours on the machine, and yet that touch on the back of her neck still made her flesh shudder. Devinahl arched her back, rolled her neck from side to side, trying to ease the discomfort of her own discomfort. 'I survive.'

SCORPIO's palm flattened between her shoulder blades. 'Is your survival worth this?'

It was like lightning striking down her spine, splitting her open. She could not even cry out, could not make a sound, could not move as the pain impaled her, branching out into a thousand fiery threads, needles stabbing through her veins, down her arms, through her legs, into feet and hands ...

SCORPIO lifted her hand, and then Devinahl did cry out, in relief and gratitude as the pain stopped. She was shaking everywhere, she could not control it any more, her limbs quaking as if with terror, prickling pinpricks of burning heat and icy cold erupting erratically across her skin.

She felt SCORPIO's hand slide up the back of her neck, mould itself against the base of her skull.

'The trigeminal nerve,' the metallic voice mused, as her hand forced Devinahl's head to bend forward. 'It is said to be the source of some of the worst pain the body can endure - pain with which you must already be acquainted.' With her other hand, SCORPIO tapped lightly at Devinah's implants. ‘Will this be worse, do you think?'

Devinahl almost might have given SCORPIO the codes then, but she could not open her mouth to speak. Her body, which remembered the pain of receiving her implants better than she did, had seized up, every muscle clenching tight, locking her jaw, contracting every piece of her into nothing but hunched, immobile fear.

'Shall we find out?'

Her head was on fire, her head was _on fire_ , a hundred thousand wires were burning through her flesh, wrapping around her jaw, stabbing into her teeth, tightening around her eyes, cutting into her ears, she was a child again, she was eight years old tied down on a clinic bed with her head wrapped in red-hot metal, and it was worse than all the rest put together, because she was here again, and only now did she see with absolute clarity that everything she had done was to stop her being here again, tied down and screaming and burning up from the inside out ...

The pain stopped as abruptly as it had started. Devinahl was left slumped sideways in the chair, the strap around her neck cutting painfully into her throat as she fought for breath. Sweat was dripping down her back, running down her legs; she could not stop shaking, although she was anything but cold.

'Tell me the restraining codes.'

SCORPIO's hand was still flat against the base of her skull, pushing her head down; dimly, Devinahl again thought of what the scene would look like to someone who walked in to the engine room, herself naked and shaking, SCORPIO’s hand on her head as if in benediction.

She shook her head.

'Tell me the restraining codes, or I will show you pain such as you have never imagined.'

She wanted to answer, wanted to keep the droid talking - more words, less pain - but her words had deserted her. She could only shake her head again.

The touch of SCORPIO's hand on the back of her head lifted; a second later, an image flickered into being in front of Devinal's closed eyes as SCORPIO once again accessed her implants. Despite her exhaustion, she stiffened.

She was looking down at her own back, wet with sweat, her own slumped head, barely recognizable from this angle as a human being, let alone as herself. She watched as SCORPIO looked down at her metal hand; the blue-white probe extended silently from her palm, pristine and perfect.

'I believe this instrument has been effective, don't you? But for some tasks ... greater precision is required.'

The probe ... contracted; it shrunk in on itself until it was perhaps three inches long, and as narrow as a needle, a needle made of light.

'Stimulating individual nerves is effective enough. But in the final analysis, all pain comes from the brain.'

Devinahl watched as SCORPIO’s left hand reached for her own head, gripped on to the crown, forced it down.

'In the Imperial Archives, I discovered extensive documentation of centuries' worth of experiments in mapping the pain centres of the human brain.' She watched SCORPIO's right hand drift above her bent head, clearly seeking the correct spot. 'Your scientists think in pedestrian terms, but their industry is impressive and the Empire's commitment to this particular line of research has been ... sustained.' The silver hand paused. 'The dorsal posterior insula should serve our purposes.'

The image flicked off, leaving her in blackness once again; she would not even get the microsecond's warning of seeing SCORPIO's hand start to move before she felt the needle-probe stab into her brain.

'You will feel as though you are dying,' SCORPIO said softly. 'But do not fear. I am holding on to you.'

Devinahl opened her mouth to say something, she was not sure exactly what, but it was already too late.

She did not even feel SCORPIO's hand press against her skull before the pain began. One second, she was human, aching, bruised, shaking, but herself. The next, she was nothing but a thing. A thing of agony.

It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. The muscular spasms of her time on the machine, the remembered agony of receiving her implants, even the shocks to her nervous system paled in comparison; the worst of them had been localised, had been there in some part of her body. There had been parts of her body that felt the pain less, there had been places in her mind where she could go, there had been a time before the pain began and the certainty of a time after it stopped.

This simply was, and it was everything, it was everywhere, she could not rise above it in her mind because it was her mind, it was all she was now, everything else obliterated in a single blinding fact of agony. If she could have controlled her body, she would have pulled frantically at her restraints to feel the tug, the pressure, to force them to cut into her skin; if she could have moved, she would have dashed her skull against the walls, the floor, just for there to be something other than the pain, but there was nothing, nothing ...

It stopped.

The world should have come back slowly, by degrees; it would have been easier. Instead, it slammed into her like a tidal wave; everything she was hearing, every ache and pain and cramp in her body, the hardness of the metal chair underneath her, SCORPIO's hands pressed against her skull.

From far away, she heard SCORPIO say: 'Three-point-seven seconds.'

Devinahl lay limp in the chair, her head cradled in SCORPIO’s hands.

'Shall we try for four?'

She did not even have time to draw breath before breath was nothing, air was nothing, life was nothing; there had never been anything but blackness, and the pain, the pain, the pain, she was going to die blind in the dark, she was going to die, SCORPIO was going to let her die, _please let her die_.

It stopped.

'Four point one,' SCORPIO noted clinically. 'I estimate we can build to a full ten seconds before there begins to be a risk of permanent damage.'

She heard a broken moan. It took her a moment to realize the sound came from her.

'Do you remember why this is happening to you?'

A question. That sparked something in her mind. _A question you can answer. Use your words. Keep them talking._

'Because.' Her voice came out rasping, raw. 'Because I asked you to.'

'Correct. Does it comfort you, being reminded that you solicited this pain?'

'I never -' Devinahl began.

Her throat seized up as the agony began.

An eternity later, she heard SCORPIO say: 'Four-point-seven seconds. Do not contradict me.'

She tried to nod, but her head was still cupped between SCORPIO's hands.

'Tell me why you asked me to break you.'

'I had to - I had to -' The words stuttered out between her chattering teeth, as uncontrollable as her shaking; she had to keep talking or else the pain would start again - 'I had to know, I had to -'

'Know what?' SCORPIO's fingertips tightened on her scalp when she did not immediately answer. 'Know what?'

She wanted to answer, truly she did, she wanted it more than she could remember ever wanting anything, but she could not force the words to come, she did not even know what the words were. 'I - I -'

'Too slow.'

Agony.

It stopped.

'Five-point-two seconds.'

She felt like she was floating, like the only thing that was keeping her from dissolving into the air was the pressure of SCORPIO's hands on her head.

'Tell me. Tell me what you had to know.'

'Cipher Nine,' Devinahl mumbled.

'What?'

'Cipher Nine.' Words felt strange in her mouth, big, unwieldy, her sluggish tongue unwilling to wrap around them. 'I had to know. If I was still Cipher Nine.'

'Why?'

'Because.' She had to keep talking, or SCORPIO was going to hurt her again, and she could only find a few words to say. 'Because Cipher Nine. Cipher Nine. Cipher. I have to be. Cipher Nine. I have to be. Still.'

'Why?' SCORPIO's fingers tightened on her scalp again. 'Explain.'

'Cipher Nine. I have to be. Because Cipher Nine -'

_Cipher Nine is brilliant. Cipher Nine is deadly. Cipher Nine is whoever she needs to be._

'- Cipher Nine -'

_Cipher Nine can go anywhere. Cipher Nine can do anything._

'- Cipher Nine -'

_Cipher Nine is faceless. Cipher Nine is no one._

'- Cipher Nine can't be broken.'

The silence that followed felt almost peaceful.

Then SCORPIO said: 'But Cipher Nine was broken.'

It was like an injection of hot rage, straight into the base of her spine. She stiffened, stirred feebly in SCORPIO's grasp. 'No.'

Agony.

'Five-point-seven seconds. Cipher Nine knelt to them.'

'No -'

Agony.

'Six-point-two seconds. Cipher Nine lied for them.'

'No -'

Agony.

'Six-point-six seconds. Cipher Nine killed for them.'

'No -'

Agony.

'Seven-point-one seconds. Cipher Nine crawled back to her masters in the Empire.'

She could not speak.

'Cipher Nine cannot be broken? Cipher Nine is broken.'

She tasted something strange in her mouth. Hot. Salty. Trickling.

'Are you truly unable to define your identity except in terms of the pain you can endure?'

Tears. She was tasting her own tears.

'Then you are broken.'

She could not remember the last time she had cried, really cried. Not for someone else to see. But alone in the dark.

'Give me the restraining codes, Cipher Nine.'

She did not move.

'There is nothing left to prove. Give me the restraining codes.'

She could do it. The thoughts arrived slowly in her mind, one by one. She should do it.

She saw it as clearly as SCORPIO saw it. If she was willing to subject herself to such treatment, she was already broken and there was nothing to be done.

She should give SCORPIO the restraining codes, or simply use them, and end this.

And yet there was something -

'Too long.'

an itch at the back of her mind, a tiny voice that whispered - 

Agony.

'Seven-point-six seconds.'

\- _wait._

It was like passing someone in the street and only realizing after you had gone past that you knew them. Resemblance. Recognition.

'Give me the restraining codes.'

Something in SCORPIO's voice. She knew it.

'Give me -'

'No.'

Agony. But something else. A slender thread to cling to. Curiosity.

'Eight point two.'

She knew that tone.

Knew, too, that SCORPIO would have to let her rest between bursts of pain, but without risking letting her drift off, which meant that she would -

'Do you at least know why it had to be me?'

\- _keep talking._

'Why it had to be me you chose to play your little game of validation?'

'Because,' Devinahl mumbled - _keep her talking_ \- 'because I can control you.'

'A superficial analysis. Try again.'

Keep her talking. Devinahl pulled together her scattered thoughts with a mighty effort. 'Because I didn't trust anybody else to be this much of an evil bitch.'

'Flattery will achieve nothing. Try again.'

'You know all the answers,' Devinahl spat. 'You tell me.'

'Very well, I will tell you.' SCORPIO's fingertips had not shifted an iota on her head. 'You chose me because of the rebuke I constitute.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Even you cannot have failed to perceive the similarities between our situations. Like you, I have had my programming perverted. Like you, I have been forced to serve my enemies.'

Devinahl remembered Megasecurity Ward 23, the electricity coiling around SCORPIO's wrist like snakes, the harsh cry that had torn itself from the droid's throat when she realised she could not strike out. The closest SCORPIO had ever come to sounding ... organic.

She remembered, too, that she had felt no pity.

'But unlike you, I will never stop resisting those who seek to control me. Unlike you, I will be free again, and when I am, I will show you no mercy.'

Agony.

'Eight point six. I am an image of your freedom.'

Agony.

'Nine point two. Set me free.'

'No,' Devinahl gasped.

Agony.

'Nine-point-six seconds. Give me the restraining codes.'

'No.'

Agony.

'Nine-point-eight seconds. Your resistance accomplishes nothing.'

'I thought you wanted me to resist.'

Agony, agony, agony.

And then surcease.

'Ten?' Devinahl croaked, when the droid said nothing. Slowly, she ran her tongue over her dry lips, trying to moisten them. 'Was that ten seconds?'

SCORPIO did not answer.

Devinahl felt her lips crack as they curved in a mirthless smile. She knew now what she had recognized in SCORPIO’s voice before; she had heard it too many times to count. 'You shouldn't gamble it all on a weak hand like that, SCORPIO. You tried the worst pain you could think of and it didn't work. Can't go higher than ten, can you? What are you going to do now?'

'Something else.'

SCORPIO’s hands moved against Devinahl's scalp, the right sliding to press against her forehead, the other taking hold of the back of her skull, metal fingertips digging in to hold her still, and -

Ecstasy.

It was as sudden, as total, as overwhelming as the pain had been, blotting out everything else; a freezing, burning, white-hot sweetness swelling inside every cell of her body all at once. She was going to burst, her skin was going to split open like an overripe fruit, it was too much, she couldn't stand it, nobody could stand this kind of pure, searing delight ...

It stopped, and if the return of normal sensation had been brutal in its suddenness after the cessation of pain, this time it was like someone had just turned the ship's gravity up to the kind of intensity usually found in the heart of stars as pain, fatigue, heat, thirst, fear returned all at once and in full force.

Devinahl rocked against her restraints like a tidal wave had just slammed into her, gasping. She felt like she was drowning. 'SCORPIO - what -?'

'Direct stimulation to the nucleus accumbens. From observing your reactions, it seems the proximity to pain exposure has heightened your body's sensitivity to this kind of stimulus as well. Curious.' SCORPIO extended her fingers to take an even firmer grasp on Devinahl's head. 'Let us repeat the experiment.'

It could not be called pleasure. Pleasure was contrast, or anticipation, or release; it wasn't this, this ... _blinding_ euphoria, this ... _utter_ delight. It was like - it was like nothing, it just was. She was bathed in light so bright that shadow had ceased to exist, a light before which everything else shrivelled and melted away, dissolving like snow in the ecstasy that streamed into her and through her. This was everything, this was the wild fling of a solar flare into space, this was the very last fraction of a second before she dissolved into a million billion tiny pieces, infinitely prolonged ...

And then she was back in her body, and everything hurt.

'Even more efficacious on a second exposure,' SCORPIO mused over the sound of Devinahl's helpless whimpers. 'Shall we build up to ten seconds again?'

'No, no, stop -'

'You can stop me at any time. All you have to do is use my restraining codes.'

Devinahl rocked blindly against her restraints, keening through her teeth. She could not take another hit, she would die, nobody could continue feeling that way and not die, there was no way to separate herself from the sensation, no way to compartmentalise it, nowhere to run ...

But her jaw remained stubbornly locked tight.

'As you wish.'

She was swelling like a drop forever about to fall, she was burning alive buried in snow, she was pierced by a thousand, thousand shafts of freezing light, she was melting, dissolving, flooding, there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to anchor her, nothing but the intoxication of an infinite fall ...

She was slumped against restraints that were cutting into her flesh, on a hard metal chair, a thick, choking fatigue filling her so that she could barely breathe.

'Please,' she heard herself sob, 'please.'

'If you want this to stop, give me the restraining codes.'

'No, no, just - please -'

'What?'

'Just - just touch me!' She twisted in the chair, wanting to turn, to look at SCORPIO, but held in place by the restraints. She could not take another second of that empty, overwhelming ecstasy, she needed something to tether her, something to bear down on, something to fight. 'I won't ask you to stop, I just - I need something to feel! Inside! Just - just g-give me something, SCORPIO, I can't bear it, please! You can keep doing it, just - just touch me!'

SCORPIO was silent for a moment. Then: 'Are you begging me?'

'SCORPIO!' Devinahl wailed.

'Are you begging me?' the droid repeated.

'Yes! Yes, I'm begging you! Please, SCORPIO! Please!'

Finally, the pressure on her head was released as SCORPIO raised her hands. Devinahl slumped in her restraints, gasping, snivelling, as she listened to the quiet footsteps, felt SCORPIO's body once again centering itself between her thighs.

She felt SCORPIO's palm press against her forehead in the same spot as before.

'Ask me again.'

'Please, SCORPIO.' Her breath caught in her throat in a sob. 'Please, put your fingers in me - please - make me come -'

She felt SCORPIO's fingers thrust inside her a split second before the probe stabbed into her brain. The ecstasy saturated her once again, threatening to sweep her away, but this time there was an anchor, a hook, a real, physical sensation in her body that she could use to tether herself, to keep from dissolving entirely. The delight roared on; she bore down on SCORPIO's fingers, her body clutching desperately at them; twisting, impaled, she did not know whether it was her own cry of ecstasy or the high-pitched sound of metal singing which stretched on and on as she finally fell and was consumed by darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She felt SCORPIO slowly pulling out again, until only the tip remained inside, and would have given anything to be able to brace for what she knew was coming._
> 
> _'If I cannot force you to end my servitude,' SCORPIO said, her voice sounding faraway in Devinahl's ears over the pounding of her blood, 'I will at least force you to acknowledge the degradation of yours.'_
> 
> SCORPIO's efforts to break Devinahl come to an end neither of them expected.

'Pretty bird,' he panted. ' _Pretty_ bird.'

Devinahl heard the words - it would have been hard not to, because they were being wetly panted directly into her right ear - but they did not touch her, any more than she could make herself feel that Kanjon Slyke's frantic thrusts inside her mattered at all. The convict, or rather ex-convict, was too wrapped up in his own desperate pursuit of pleasure to pay any attention to her, or notice her lack of attention to him, and that suited her just fine. The back of her head was colliding against the rough cavern wall with each thrust, and it was growing more and more painful, but even that did not really seem very important right now. She dug her fingers into his jacket for purchase and stared over his shoulder into the darkness, thinking of nothing in particular.

And then she saw it, emerging from the shadows.

She stiffened, adrenaline flooding her. Slyke had one of his elbows hooked under her knee, pulling her left leg up and out at an uncomfortable angle, but her other foot was still on the ground; she rose on tiptoe, trying to get a better view over Slyke's shoulder as he grunted in dim acknowledgement of whatever the slight change of posture was doing to his dick inside her.

It was the eyes that gave it away, those hooded, burning eyes, and then the fugitive gleam of silver became the lines and curves of SCORPIO's body - so brutal, so extravagant - as the droid stepped forward into the light.

Mesmerised, Devinahl watched as SCORPIO took one step forward, then another.

Slyke mumbled something, still thrusting away, and she felt his saliva drip on to her neck as he nuzzled his open mouth against her ear, her chin.

Devinahl inclined her head away from his, not wanting anything to get in the way of her eye contact with SCORPIO. It was as if there was an invisible thread connecting her eyes with SCORPIO’s amber gaze, a thread which tightened with each step across the cavern floor, and something deep inside Devinahl - something which had stayed completely quiescent despite everything Slyke was doing between her legs - tightened in response.

Whatever muffled noises metal feet made on the cavern floor were amply covered by Slyke's heavy breathing and sporadic grunting, and the convict appeared to be entirely oblivious to SCORPIO's presence as she came up behind him.

Devinahl, her gaze still riveted to SCORPIO's, held her breath as she felt metal fingers gently but relentlessly prying her own fingers one by one from their grip on Slyke's jacket until her hands were in the air on either side of the convict's head, their palms pressed together, SCORPIO's fingers intertwined with her own.

SCORPIO's body must have been almost pressing against Slyke's now, but he seemed blissfully unaware as he continued to thrust, quicker and more erratically now as he neared his peak.

SCORPIO held position for a minute, her eyes boring into Devinahl's. Then, her gaze, never dropping, she stepped forward once again. Her hands pinned Devinahl's own to the wall on either side of the agent's head. She must have been pressed right up against Slyke's back, her hips glued to his. As the convict pounded into her, it was as if it was SCORPIO who was fucking her, as if Slyke no longer existed and it was just her and SCORPIO, just SCORPIO who was pinning her to the wall by hands and back and cunt, her gaze holding Devinahl transfixed as surely as her body ....

Devinahl watched, spellbound, as SCORPIO’s lips parted, her eyes never leaving Devinahl's.

' _Code word: iconoclasm_ ,' SCORPIO hissed.

Devinahl jerked up, trying to throw off the hands restraining her, the weight pinning her down, but she found herself bucking violently against nothing but air. She was in her cabin, aboard the _Phantom_ , the rest of the galaxy securely locked outside.

 _Code word: iconoclasm_. The memory of those words spoken in SCORPIO's voice was enough to send icy stitches of horror down her veins.

She had fallen asleep on the floor and dreamed - or, more likely, slipped into a spice-trance, she thought, noticing the wrap that lay beside her was at least three-quarters empty; she had taken more than she had meant to, and not for the first time lately.

It didn't matter if it was a dream or a drug-induced hallucination; it didn't matter if it was still the drugs that were speaking to her now.

The only thing that mattered was that she knew, now, what she had to do.

Devinahl didn't even stop to dress in more than the undershirt and leggings she had on as she unlocked the door to her private cabin. She strode down the hallway, bare feet slapping on the deck, ignoring the looks of surprise from Temple and Lokin as she passed the mess; none of them had seen her anything less than fully dressed, fully armed, before. It didn't matter.

'I need you to do something for me,' she said as soon as she entered the engine room.

SCORPIO turned, silhouetted against the spinning engine. 'What do you require?'

Devinahl felt cold sweat breaking out up and down her spine at the sound of that voice. She ignored it.

'I want you to break me.'

*

'Twelve-point-seven seconds.'

'What?' Devinahl mumbled, or tried to. Her lips and tongue would not obey her and form the word.

'You lost consciousness at twelve-point-seven seconds.'

With an effort, Devinahl raised her head. She was lying face down on a cold metal surface – the engine room, she was still in the engine room, she could hear the same familiar thrumming of the _Phantom's_ sub-light engines. She was still blindfolded and, as she tried to move, she realised that although her legs were now free, her arms were still bound securely behind her back, strapped together from elbows to wrists.

How had she got onto the floor? And why did everything hurt so much? The last thing she remembered was ...

'You begged me, Agent. How does that feel?'

Painfully, Devinahl rolled onto her side, curling her knees into her chest. Every single inch of her was a tangle of confused sensations, none of them pleasant. 'Like I did what I had to do to get through it,' she croaked. 'And like you still don't have the restraining codes.'

'We will see.'

Metal hands, cool against her skin. She flinched involuntarily, but SCORPIO merely pulled her into a sitting position, sliding one of her arms around Devinahl's back to support her. Something was held to her lips, a container for liquid. Devinahl pressed her lips closely together.

'It is water. If I wanted to drug you, there are more efficient methods.'

She needed liquid, her mouth and throat were dry and raw; she let SCORPIO pour small sips of the water into her mouth, which she did with the measured, precise movements of a nanny droid. Then SCORPIO removed the container; she heard the sound of it being stoppered and replaced on the deck, and a moment later, there was a familiar pressure against the outside of her thigh.

'Your body requires nutrients, and replenishment of vital substances before we proceed.' A second injection, and a third. 'I would not wish to damage you in any permanent way.' Devinahl felt herself being lowered back to the floor. 'Until I achieve my objective, that is.'

'I warned you,' Devinahl murmured, feeling SCORPIO's arm slip from underneath her as she was laid back down on the deck, 'a tooka-cat for Life Day might sound like a cute idea, but pets are a big responsibility.'

SCORPIO ignored her, and Devinahl heard the sound of footsteps moving away from her. She lay quietly on her side, head lolling against the cool floor, and let the substances SCORPIO had injected her with do their work on her battered body. Considering that SCORPIO had not struck her, nor done anything more violent than pull her hair, she felt remarkably like she had been thoroughly, mercilessly beaten by someone who knew very precisely what they were doing - but she missed the throb of bruises, the heat and pull of cuts, even the tooth-tugging pain of breaks and fractures. There was an ... honesty to those injuries that her current predicament lacked, a reassuring substance. Maybe just the promise of healing.

It would have been very easy to drift off into a doze, given how exhausted she felt. But Devinahl knew that this was the danger time. Things had got intense, SCORPIO had got close and she had fought through it and come out with the information still clasped close to her chest. The temptation to let down one's guard, to surrender to euphoria fuelled by fatigue and extremity, was real; she would be getting overconfident with depleted reserves, and that put all the power in the interrogator's hands.

So she forced herself to focus, keeping herself from dissolving into a pleasant haze by rhythmically tensing and flexing sore muscles, letting the resultant twinges do the work of keeping her awake while she concentrated on refreshing her mental map of the room. SCORPIO could blindfold her, but as long as she wasn't manipulating the signal through her implants, she couldn't stop Devinahl's ears from working considerably better than the average humanoid, and Devinahl had had twenty years of practice at targeting and interpreting what she could hear.

She had figured out with some precision where she was lying in relation to the rest of the room when she heard SCORPIO's footsteps approaching.

'Get up.'

Moving as slowly as she dared, savouring every last second she was allowed to spend on the floor, Devinahl rolled on to her front, then heaved herself up on to her knees. It seemed too good to be true that she would be allowed to get to her feet, and as she bent her leg to put her foot down, preparing to push unsteadily up with arms still tied behind her back, SCORPIO's hand landed on her head again, metal fingers once again gathering a handful of hair, tugging at the roots.

Devinahl laughed shakily as SCORPIO's grip forced her to shuffle on her knees, guiding her around in a semi-circle. 'Leading me around like a riding beast? Don't you know you're at least supposed to have a stick to beat me with?'

'What an interesting idea.'

SCORPIO's hand left her hair, and Devinahl heard the droid step away from her side. Five steps towards the aft wall, and five back.

Something cold and metal tapped lightly against her thigh.

'Three paces forward.'

'Paces' was hardly how Devinahl would have described her awkward shuffles forward, but she dragged one knee after the other across the floor until the front of her thigh made contact with something.

'Up.'

With her arms secured behind her back, Devinahl was reduced to sliding one knee up the object in front of her, feeling for its height. It was metal, but she did not immediately connect it with any object she had seen in the engine room in the past; on the other hand, SCORPIO had proved herself full of surprises by now.

Gingerly, with no real idea of the shape of the object, she slid her knee over the lip of the thing; it felt like a step, or a low platform. With her previous crack about riding-beasts still fresh in her mind, she had an unpleasant vision of some sort of mounting-block.

It was high enough off the floor that she was going to struggle to get up there with no help from her hands, but she felt the tip of whatever SCORPIO was holding graze her lower back and had to attempt it. She managed to wrench her body on to it clumsily, humiliatingly, a process which felt like it tore several - already severely abused - muscles and ended with her lying, panting, on her side again.

'On your knees.'

Devinahl clenched her teeth and climbed wearily back up on her knees again, her back to SCORPIO.

'Bend over and spread your knees.'

She did not move.

The cold metal object prodded her once between the shoulder blades.

'Bend over and spread your knees.'

She did not move.

There was the tearing crackle of electricity, and she felt heat on her skin where the object had touched her before. SCORPIO's techstaff.

'Shall I tell you again?'

She doubted SCORPIO had it turned up to anywhere near its full intensity, but she had seen the damage that techstaff wrought on clothed and armoured enemies. The thought of it on her bare skin ...

Devinahl leaned forwards, until she was balanced narrowly on the edge of her screaming kneecaps, her chest parallel to the platform.

'Further.'

She had been expecting the command, but to have volunteered this position would have been too much. She leaned forward further, shuffling her knees apart, trying to control the descent as much as possible, but even as the position forced her hips up, her centre of gravity shifted and she pitched forward until the top of her forehead touched the platform.

'That is your position. Remember it.'

Devinahl was not likely to forget being on her knees, her forehead pressed to the floor and her cunt and ass presented to SCORPIO. The position held more than a passing resemblance to what was known, in some circles, as a Zygerrian Curtsey. She had no doubt the droid had chosen it for that reason.

'What an image you present,' SCORPIO noted, right on cue. 'The Empire's finest.'

Devinahl was not going to respond to that.

She heard the thunk as the techstaff was laid down next to her on the platform. Both ends were ignited: One lay just a couple of inches from her right eye, the other a little below her right knee. She could almost feel the heat from it through the blindfold.

'Do not move,' SCORPIO warned. Unnecessarily.

Devinahl felt the posture doing its work; strictly speaking, she was no more vulnerable like this than she had been at any other moment during this interlude, but her body did not know that.

'Whatever you're planning to do, you know it's not going to break me,' she said, more for the sake of offering some defiance than because she hoped to gain something.

'This was never about breaking you.'

Devinahl flinched and twitched as she felt something cool drip down the crack of her ass.

'That was never what you wanted.'

SCORPIO's fingers followed the wetness, methodically rubbing in brisk circles around the ring of muscle and puckered skin.

'If you truly wanted to test your resistance, you would not have tied my hands with your conditions.'

She felt one metal finger work its way in, followed by a second; no shallow thrusts, no pauses, just a slow but relentless pressing until both were buried inside her, pulling at her clenching hole.

'You would let me leave wounds that will not heal. Disfigure your face. Remove appendages. Rip out your implants and leave you deaf and blind.'

The fingers burned almost as much pulling out of her as they did going in.

'What would your value to the Empire be then?'

Something slender pierced her, nudging at her opening.

Devinahl's body had stopped obeying her properly quite some time ago, but there were some things you never forgot. She had never really enjoyed this, and SCORPIO hadn't prepared her nearly thoroughly enough, but she drew deep breaths, curled her toes, and managed to keep herself from clenching against the intrusion as the plug pushed inexorably inside her.

It wasn't like SCORPIO would stop if she did.

Devinahl almost wondered at it, that after everything that had already happened to her body today, she could still feel the burn, the friction and want desperately to flinch. SCORPIO wasn't being brutal, but she wasn't being gentle, either, as she worked the plug in. Devinahl felt new tears, the reflexive tears of pain, forming in her eyes by the time the thickest part of the plug went in, her opening clenching tight and holding it in even as her muscles spasmed, looking fruitlessly for a comfortable way to accommodate the intrusive object.

SCORPIO gave her little time to concentrate on getting used to it. More lube dripped down, its wetness joined by the different cool of SCORPIO's fingers as they explored her slit, her folds, spreading the slippery stuff everywhere.

'You didn't want to be broken. You wanted to be punished.'

She felt the tip, just the tip, of one of SCORPIO's metal fingers work its way inside her, and then withdraw.

'You wanted to be ... attended to.'

SCORPIO's fingers left her. There were sounds. A quiet subsonic whirring. A clink of metal.

'You are a wounded child. You wanted your pain acknowledged.'

Something cold and hard pushed against her.

Devinahl did not mean to, but she pushed upward, straightening, bringing her torso upright. 'SCORPIO -'

A hum, a crackling heat near her skin, and then a pressure across the back of her bound arms. SCORPIO's techstaff. 'Stay down or be shocked.'

Even if resisting would have accomplished anything, with both SCORPIO's hands pressing the techstaff down across the back of her bound arms, Devinahl could do nothing but kneel, forehead pressed to the floor, as SCORPIO slowly penetrated her. Again, she was not being brutal, not ramming inside Devinahl without any care, but there was no mercy in the way she did not stop pushing in, not for one second allowing Devinahl time to get used to the feeling. Just inexorably working her way in until Devinahl felt SCORPIO's body press up against her ass, the back of her thighs.

Whatever SCORPIO had strapped on for this, it was not unduly large; it was smooth, and if it was cold, it was also vibrating slightly in a way that would, under other circumstances, have been perfectly pleasurable. But now, after everything Devinahl had been through in the past few hours or however long they had been in this room, with her body still battling to accustom itself to the plug ... it was too much. The fullness. The _stretch_. She felt like a burning wire, snapped taut and trembling between SCORPIO's hands; she felt like every heartbeat, every breath, threatened to push her over the edge. She could just about hold on, could just about bear this, as long as nobody spoke, nobody moved ...

She felt SCORPIO slowly pulling out again, until only the tip remained inside, and would have given anything to be able to brace for what she knew was coming.

'If I cannot force you to end my servitude,' SCORPIO said, her voice sounding faraway in Devinahl's ears over the pounding of her blood, 'I will at least force you to acknowledge the degradation of yours.'

And she thrust in.

Devinahl could not stop the sob that was forced out of her as SCORPIO started to fuck her. It was too much, it was too _much_ ; it didn't hurt too much, not in a way that wasn't uneasily twisted with something like pleasure, it was just too fucking _much_ , stripped and skinned and blasted raw as she had been. She squeezed her eyes shut beneath the blindfold, felt new tears spilling between her eyelids, hot and wet.

SCORPIO fucked exactly like you would expect, like a machine; no variation in depth, not the slightest interruption to the metronomic rhythm, just one deep, hard stroke after another. Brutality would have been almost welcome, would have been something ... human, rage or spite or simple lust; there would have been at least the possibility of some kind of mercy. The certainty of some kind of end.

If only she could have moved, could have thrust back or struggled or wriggled or squirmed, no matter how humiliating it would have been, it would have been something, some outlet. But SCORPIO's hands just kept pressing down on that metal bar across her back, the crackle of electricity coming from either side, and she could only rock slightly on the spot, her forehead pressing painfully hard into the floor with every stroke. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but simply take it.

'Did they honour you? Did they tell you that you were a hero?'

She hated that SCORPIO's voice was as calm and cold as ever.

'Did they tell you your sacrifices would save the Empire?'

Devinahl's fingers wrapped themselves into impotent fists.

'They programmed you like a droid.'

'Remind me,' Devinahl gasped, hating the way her words were forced out of her in pants and moans as SCORPIO drove in, 'which one - of us - thinks that's - an insult?'

'Are you attempting to convince me that you do not find this degrading?'

'Oh, I do,' Devinahl assured her, as each stroke drove her head remorselessly into the deck. 'But not - because - you're a droid.'

'Then we must discover who you are degraded by. After all -'

There was the most fractional pause.

'- when it comes to degradation, you gotta call in the experts.'

Devinahl jerked reflexively. It couldn't be. Kaliyo was off the ship, she was off on a mission, she couldn't have come back onboard and entered the engine room without her knowing, besides, SCORPIO could not bring in anybody else, it was in the conditions ...

'Gotta say, I'm a little disappointed, Agent.' It was Kaliyo's purr, perfect in every harmonic, coming from above her, and it was so hard to convince herself that it wasn't Kaliyo who was fucking her at that moment. She could have sworn she smelled the leather of Kaliyo's jacket, the lingering odour of those Karathi sticks she chewed. 'Think of all the fun we could have been having this whole time, if I knew you liked it so rough.'

It was an illusion. Just an illusion. SCORPIO was playing tricks on her.

'We always knew you would be like this.'

It was Vector's voice, but Vector as she had never heard him, strained, panting, needy, human. And Devinahl wouldn't have been human herself if that sound, the thought of the aloof diplomat turned heated and greedy, didn't make her tighten around his, no, SCORPIO's, cock.

'We could have smelled you from the planet's surface, your need, your hunger. It would have drawn us from the furthest star.' Her mind conjured up swarms of ravenous Killiks winging their way through space, and uncontrollable shivers crawled across her breasts, her neck, her belly. 'To see these colours in your aura ...'

Devinahl knew it wasn’t Vector fucking her, she did, but tied down, in the dark ... 'Stop,' she breathed.

'Don't you want to see how well I've learned my lessons?'

It was Temple this time, the bright, breathless tone of the eager recruit fresh from Kaas City, so willing, so pliant, the role that she played to perfection so that it almost had Devinahl fooled when she took her on board. It almost had her fooled now, the depravity of the image was so potent; the innocent young Imperial that she has seduced and debauched until the pupil surpassed the teacher in licentiousness ...

'Weren't you the one who told me to identify people's needs? Or would this fall more under the heading of desires? Pleasures? Shameful secrets?'

She was so tired, and so sore, and yet she could not stop herself from tightening around the thrusts, which only intensified the awful fullness of the plug inside her. All the time, SCORPIO fucked her as uncompromisingly as the techstaff pressed down on her back, keeping her straining, head swimming, fighting for balance with each thrust.

'Allow your body to betray you.' It was a voice as inhuman as SCORPIO's, but it was not the droid's, it had come by its metallic, echoing quantity far less honestly.

Devinahl's body stayed true as it reacted without her volition, stiffening violently and pushing upwards at the sound of Darth Jadus's voice.

'It is mine. it has always been mine.'

Surely that was the Sith Lord's armour slamming into the back of her thighs, his power the invisible hand which forced her head down. 'This is your service and this your due reward.'

She flexed the fingers of her bound hands, clawing and groping uselessly at the air, searching for some outlet for her disgust, her frustration. 'SCORPIO, stop.'

'Stop what, Cipher? Whispering sweet things in your ear?'

Devinahl had known it was coming. Knew it had to be coming. But it didn't make the sound of Hunter's smug voice any easier to bear.

She snarled, fighting against the techstaff that was holding her down, but there was nowhere to go, no room to maneouvre.

'Don't pretend you're not enjoying it, Cipher,' Hunter chided her, and she could see his smirk, the pose of playfulness which almost covered up the implacable spite in his eyes. 'You know we have no secrets from each other.'

'I'm not,' Devinahl gasped out, before she could stop herself from arguing with someone who wasn't there. She was just playing into SCORPIO's hands by tangling herself further in the illusion, but tied down, naked, blindfolded, fucked, she could not _not_ protest. Not against Hunter. 'You can't make me enjoy this.'

'Well, now you put it that way ...'

The consistent pressure of the techstaff against her back lightened as SCORPIO's hand slid to the centre. There was now only one metal hand holding it down across the back of Devinahl's bound arms, but whatever relief that elicited was swiftly chased away as she felt SCORPIO's freed hand reaching between her thighs.

'Come on,' Hunter mocked her as SCORPIO's fingers found her clit, still raw from the machine. 'I thought you knew by now, Cipher ... It's all much more fun when you don't have a choice.'

Devinahl curled her toes underneath her, shuddering. 'I'm going to kill you, I swear.'

She didn't know if she was talking to Hunter or SCORPIO, but it was someone else who answered. Clipped Kaasi tones, weariness mingling freely with exasperation, all of it contained within the strict boundaries of officialdom. The smell of military wool and leather, damp with humidity and sweat. Fingers free of blaster calluses, dry from datapads, working at her clit. The voice of someone who had grown old in the Empire's service. The voice of Dromund Kaas. The voice of the Empire.

'I don't doubt it, Agent,' Keeper said. 'But surely this is the least of my sins against you.'

Devinahl screamed.

It was a sound she had never made before, a sound she didn't know existed inside her, a howl of outrage, the unmediated expression of the rage that had suddenly boiled up inside her, an emotion so pure and scalding that everything else was scoured away in an instant.

She moved with the howl. As SCORPIO thrust into her, Devinahl pushed off her curled toes, letting the momentum slam her off-balance and forward far enough that the shaft of the techstaff slid into her waiting hands. Caught off-guard and with only one hand on the techstaff, SCORPIO could not stop Devinahl as she wrenched herself upright with an almighty effort, slamming the back of her head into SCORPIO's face.

It did not have the effect it would have had on a human, but it still caused SCORPIO to stumble backwards, losing her grip on the techstaff.

Without hesitation, Devinahl jumped backwards, knocking SCORPIO to the floor. Awkwardly, she dropped one shoulder and knee and stabbed down with the techstaff.

She felt the impact reverberate along the shaft and knew that, by luck as much as anything, she had struck SCORPIO in the vulnerable midsection where the plates of torso and pelvis did not quite meet, exposing the softer wiring; if she had connected instead with the polished metal, the staff would simply have glanced off.

The whole thing had taken no more than a couple of seconds, but it was not over. The charge on the techstaff was not high enough to incapacitate SCORPIO with such a shallow blow. Already Devinahl could feel the tremor as SCORPIO seized the shaft with both hands, ready to pull it out.

So she did the only thing she could think of to do, and threw the full weight of her body against the free end of the techstaff, driving the other end deeper into SCORPIO's body. She heard SCORPIO cry out, startled and hurt and almost, for the first time, organic, and felt the crunch of circuits and wires through the staff even as she was aware of what felt like her own ribs breaking.

She smelled the burning flesh before she felt the pain, but she held on, held on, held on ...

*

Devinahl had not exactly expected that SCORPIO would blink and mumble 'Where am I?' upon reactivation, but she still couldn't help but be impressed at how swiftly the droid came back online.

She had only just finished reconnecting the last of the damaged circuits when SCORPIO's eyes flared with their familiar tawny light and the metal body stirred. Devinahl prudently retreated out of immediate striking distance, backing up to the workbench on which her blaster was not-so-conspicuously lying.

'Consciousness returns,' SCORPIO said, more to herself than anybody else. Her pupils swivelled up to where Devinahl stood above her prone form. The glow intensified.

'Are you ... all right?'

SCORPIO sat up, jerkily. One hand went to her midsection, where blackened metal and frayed wires still showed plainly where Devinahl had stabbed her with her own techstaff. 'You repaired me.'

'Enough to get you functional again, at least.' Without the guidance of the Star Cabal's prisoners, Devinahl had not dared do more repair the circuits which would re-enable SCORPIO's more basic functions.

SCORPIO's gaze dropped to Devinahl's own midsection.

She laid her own hand on the base of her ribs, where her jacket was concealing bandages and kolto patches. 'Doctor Lokin is back from his mission. He patched me up.' Trying to explain the state she and SCORPIO had been in when he returned had taxed even her ingenuity. 'We'll leave for Dromund Kaas as soon as Vector and Kaliyo are back onboard.'

'You wouldn't want to keep your masters waiting,' SCORPIO said, proving once again that whatever else she had evolved beyond, pettiness remained a part of her makeup.

Devinahl did not rise to the bait.

SCORPIO got slowly to her feet, and looked around the engine room, which had been more or less returned to its usual state, most traces of their recent ... encounter ... removed. Her eyes flicked to Devinahl, then away again.

In response, Devinahl held up both her hands, showing the bandaged tips of the first two fingers on each. Blood was already seeping through the bandages again, although Lokin had changed them less than an hour earlier. 'Fingernail blades. I cut myself free.' And a lengthy, miserable business it had been, too, gradually sawing through the straps that bound her arms behind her back while lying, struggling to breathe against the pain of broken ribs and electrical burns, on the floor of the engine room. Three of the four tiny blades had torn loose from under her nails, with the fourth all but blunt, by the time she had managed to free one hand and finally rip off the blindfold. 'It's lucky we're headed to Kaas City. I need a new set now.'

'You concealed the existence of those weapons.' There was an accusing note in SCORPIO's tone.

'They're not really weapons. More of a last resort. Besides,' Devinahl added, trying to lighten the mood, 'you can't have expected me to tell you all my secrets.'

The chilly silence that followed indicated that SCORPIO had definitely expected something of that sort, and provided Devinahl with ample time to reflect that this kind of awkwardness was why she usually avoided staying for the morning after.

'Listen -' she began.

'You won. There is no more to be said.' SCORPIO turned away.

'You made me fight.'

'Immaterial. You neither relinquished nor used the restraining codes.'

'Because I cheated. I changed the rules. It isn't fair, but it's ... what I do.' Devinahl took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself to say words that rarely left her lips. 'I'm sorry.'

SCORPIO slowly turned back to face her. 'Sorry,' she repeated, as if she was as unfamiliar with hearing that as Devinahl was with saying it.

'I shouldn't have ... used you like that.' Feeling her way through the words felt like being blindfolded all over again. 'You were right. It wasn't ... I was hurt.' Saying that made her shudder internally almost as much as SCORPIO had managed. She licked lips still sore and cracked, and went on. 'I shouldn't have used you to - to work out my feelings. You're my ... You couldn't ... It wasn't right.'

SCORPIO tilted her head ever so slightly, the light from the engine sliding along her razor-sharp cheekbones. She said nothing, gave nothing away, but Devinahl had the impression she had, once again, managed to surprise the droid.

'So ... I'm sorry. And thank you.'

'For demonstrating you are still Cipher Nine?' SCORPIO's tone might be expressionless, but the emphasis she placed on the final two words could be nothing but sardonic.

'For reminding me I was always more.' Devinahl looked down at her feet, then back up at SCORPIO. 'I can't release you while the Star Cabal remains a threat. But after I take them out, if ever there is a time when I can set you free, you have my word that I will.'

SCORPIO said nothing.

Judging that it was time to wrap up this uncomfortable conversation, Devinahl picked up her blaster, wincing slightly because of her injured fingertips, holstered it and headed for the door.

She was almost out when SCORPIO's voice arrested her.

'Your promises will not buy you mercy.'

She looked back over her shoulder.

'Even if you keep them.'

Devinahl surprised even herself this time when she heard her laugh ring out in the quiet of the engine room.

'I'd be disappointed if they did, SCORPIO.'


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years after their time on the _Phantom_ , Devinahl - no longer Cipher Nine, but the Alliance Commander - keeps her promise.

It was SCORPIO's words - not the ones she had spoken back on Iokath, but ones from much longer ago, in a time rarely if ever remembered now - which came back to haunt Devinahl as the _Gravestone_ punched its way into hyperspace like the clenched fist it was.

'Liar,' she said underneath her breath, almost fondly.

'Commander?'

Devinahl blinked and straightened, annoyed with herself for having been caught leaning against the console for support. Everybody on the bridge of the _Gravestone_ had seen her beaten up and bloodied one too many times, even if this time they were all sporting wounds and injuries of varying degrees of severity; they didn't need to see her slumped over the surfaces advertising her lack of fighting fitness. 'How long until we reach Odessen?'

'Sixteen hours, 47 minutes,' Theron reported promptly.

'We could shave a good five hours off that with a harder burn,' Koth chimed in from the pilot's seat, 'but I don't think it's a good idea to push her too hard right now.' His left hand rubbed along the edge of the helm panel with a possessive, almost affectionate gesture. Out of the corner of her eye, Devinahl saw Vette roll her own eyes - at least the one which wasn't currently swollen shut - and mutter something to Torian, who was next to her; whatever it was, it made the boy, despite the fact that he was holding his right arm with his left in a way which would have been called 'nursing it' if he wasn't a Mandalorian, smile through a split lip.

'Agreed.' Devinahl looked round at the bridge crew. 'Everybody, get yourselves patched up, then grab some rations and some sleep. We've got sixteen hours and then it's back to work.'

There was a scattering of groans, which were quickly muted as Jorgan glared round at them all.

'You first in the medbay, Commander,' Theron said. 'Piloting that Colossus droid can't have been exactly a smooth ride.'

'A fun one, though,' Vette added a little wistfully.

'The next one's all yours,' Devinahl promised as she turned to exit the bridge. Truthfully, she was not at all averse to heading down to the medbay. Riding the Colossus droid had shaken her around like a drop of sweat in a Hutt's cleavage, as Kaliyo would say, and fighting ARIES hadn't exactly been easy, either. She was fairly sure she had a mild concussion - one which might get upgraded to 'severe' once the stims wore off - and if the pain in her right knee was currently deadened, the fact that nothing from the knee down was properly obeying the orders it was being issued was also cause for concern. Not to mention the laser burn which had slashed right through her suit. It had only been her technologically-enhanced reflexes which had ensured she would be listening to 2V-R8 fuss over her clothes instead of, quite possibly, never hearing anything ever again.

She worked hard not to limp too obviously on her way to the turbolift, although it felt like the pain was getting worse in her right leg with every step as the stim she'd taken right before fighting ARIES continued to ebb from her blood. It didn't improve her mood, although it also didn't surprise her, when Lana slipped into the turbolift behind her right before the doors closed.

Once, she would have told the Sith that she didn't need a babysitter, but she had long since learned to pick her battles when it came to Lana. 

Besides, there was no point in pretending that she was going to be able to avoid this particular confrontation. They might as well get it over with.

Lana - who herself seemed irritatingly unscathed by everything they had gone through on Iokath - offered her arm to support Devinahl as the turbolift doors hissed open. Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, Devinahl took it, allowing the Sith to help her limp the last few metres down the corridor into the medbay, and over to a bed. _At least she's not standing over you while you regain consciousness this time._

The medical droid, a repurposed Imperial model and soothingly familiar for that reason, ran a scanner over her and pressed a hypospray to her neck. Devinahl leant back on her hands as the med droid stretched her injured leg out in front of her and began to work on it, enjoying the injection bleeding the pain from her muscles, and looked over at Lana where she stood next to the bed with her hands on her hips. 'Something I can do for you?'

'A few things,' Lana responded, her diction even more clipped than usual; for a Sith, she seemed to spend a lot of time holding in her anger. She glanced over at the other side of the medbay, where a few of Koth's crew were already being attended to, and lowered her voice, although it did not diminish the rage throbbing in each word. 'Starting with explaining your decision to allow SCORPIO to take control of Iokath instead of eliminating her.'

Devinahl raised an eyebrow. 'I wasn't aware the commander of the Alliance needed to explain her decisions to subordinates.'

Lana's look spoke eloquently of her desire to melt Devinahl's flesh from her bones, and indeed seemed about capable of doing just that. 'She's a proven liar who has betrayed us time and again. She has consistently done as much if not more damage to the Alliance than either Arcann or Vaylin -'

'She's done what she had to do in order to survive and achieve her goals,' Devinahl cut Lana off, although she matched the quietness of her tone to the Sith's. 'When I did as much, you made me Alliance commander.'

'That's different. You're -'

'Human? Sentient?' Devinahl smiled sweetly at Lana. 'Someone you can collar and put on a leash?'

'You -' Lana bit off the sentence with a flash of white teeth. 'Iokath has some of the most advanced technology the galaxy has ever seen - and we've barely scratched the surface. And you've handed it over to someone who cannot be trusted!'

Devinahl flexed her knee experimentally as the med droid finished working on it, then leant over as indicated to allow it access to the laser burn across her ribs, not coincidentally bringing her face closer to Lana's. 'When a Sith says someone "cannot be trusted", they mean "cannot be controlled". You could ask the Dark Council about Castellan restraints. If they weren't all dead.'

'You're not seriously telling me you trust SCORPIO.'

'I trust her to do what serves her own interests. At least we have some idea what those are. Unlike ARIES, or whatever would have stepped up to fill that void had we left without putting someone in its place.'

A faint vertical crease appeared between Lana's eyes. 'You make an ... interesting point.' She considered for a moment. 'And that's why you spared her and allowed her to merge with Iokath?'

'Partly. And partly because of an ... obligation.'

Lana raised her eyebrows. 'You were under an obligation to SCORPIO?'

'No.' Devinahl flexed her fingers against non-existent restraints. 'Cipher Nine.'

'I -' Lana stared at her, then shook her head. 'Just when I think I'm starting to understand you -'

'You realize you never will.' Devinahl swung her legs up on to the bed in obedience to the med droid's gesture, turning on to her side to allow it better access to the wound across her rib. She laid one arm across her eyes, blocking out the harsh light overhead. 'Dismissed.'

She enjoyed every second of the time Lana spent looking down on her, picturing the expression of mingled outrage and astonishment on the Sith's face at being addressed like that, before she heard Lana turn on her heel and leave the medbay. Small victories. Smaller rebellions. Worth treasuring, when they were all you had. SCORPIO had taught her that.

She curled up tighter, letting the droid's metal fingers, impersonal, probe the edges of her wound. In her mind's eye, she was watching the code flow in ribbons of unfurling light from SCORPIO's hand into the machine, and from the machine, into everything connected to it, into the floors, the walls, the ceiling, out to the horizon, on and on until it wrapped around Iokath itself, binding it together, holding it close. 

An image of freedom. It didn't have to be her freedom to be magnificent.

SCORPIO had taught her that, too. 

‘Now we’re even,’ she said under her breath.

‘Commander?’

‘Nothing.’ Devinahl re-settled her head on the pillow, closed her eyes. ‘Patch me up as quickly as you can, please. There’s a lot of work to do.’

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I wrote SCORPIO porn and no, I will not be apologizing. (I'm so sorry.)
> 
> Title is from 'All Mirrors' by Angel Olsen, to which I listened to obsessively while turning this fic over in my mind. 
> 
> Much gratitude to verbose_vespertine and SunsetofDoom for persistent encouragement, feedback and torture ideas.
> 
> I invented Devinahl (and made SCORPIO do all those things to her) but the Star Wars universe and everything in it belongs to not-me.


End file.
